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Geschichte des griechischen Weltmodells vor AristoteIes 231

Vom frühhistorischen Weltbild aus fragt man nicht nach der wahren Größe der Gestirne, nach dem Fallen der Erde, nach einer Vielzahl von Welten. Alle diese Fragen, sowie die Theorie des Wirbels, werden erst mit der Himmelskugel sinnvoll. Anaxime­ nes und Xenophanes haben noch das alte Weltbild; erst Anaxago­ ras durchdenkt konsequent die Hypothese der Himmelskugel (§§ 4-9). Mit der Himmelskugel drängt sich allmählich der Ge­ danke auf, daß es kein absolutes Oben und Unten gibt, logische Entwicklung über zum Philolaos-System und zu Aristoteles (§ 10). Während sich der schrittweise erfolgende Fortschritt vom alten Weltbild über zum aristotelischen Modell im­ mer deutlicher und durch Originalstellen belegt abzeichnet, wer­ den die nur von der Doxographie überlieferten frühen Vorweg­ nahmen von Himmels- und Erdkugel immer fragwürdiger. Nach den Ergebnissen dieses Aufsatzes bleibt allein davon übrig. Diese Lage zwingt zu einer radikalen Kritik an der Anaxi­ mander-Doxographie: Die Himmelskugel ist in Anaximander hineingelesen worden (§§ 11-2). Zwei Exkurse: Anaxagoras ist zeitlich vor anzu­ SCL"en; Rechtfertigung der Deutung und Datierung des Philolaos­ Systt. 'S iq dieser Arbeit (§§ 13-4).

Kiel Detlev Fehling

THE ORIGIN OF THE PANATHENAEA

I. The problem 11. Festivals of resembling the Panathenaea IH. Erichthonius, , and the Cecropids IV. Erichthonius and the fetching of new fire V. and the sixth-century reform VI. The ritual innovations: torch-race, , ship-wagon

I. The problem

The evidence for the Panathenaea - for the procession, the , the contests, the setting of the ritual, the aspect of the worshippers and the officiants - is probably fuller than for any 232 Noel Robertson

1 other ancient festival save the ). Doubt and controversy are not wanting; yet such outstanding questions as the difference between the annual and the fourth-yearly celebra­ tions, the use of the peplos, the route and destination of the ship­ wagon, the development of the administrative boards and of the program of events, are themselves a measure of the variety and 2 extent of our knowledge ). But although so many details are so well illuminated, the centre is dark. There is no understanding of the origin and significance of the festival, of its social or seasonal purpose, and there has been almost no inquiry, only wild conjec­ ture or blank indifference. It is commonly said that the festival as we know it is adven­ titious or secondary, having been created or made over for politi­ cal ends, and so preserves little or nothing of old customs and belief3). Some allow that an earlier festival on the same date was

1) It may be of interest to compare/roportions in two general works on , Deubner's of 1932 an Parke's of 1977 (n. 2 below). The Panathenaea receive from Parke about the longest treatment of any festival - 17 pages, as against 17 for the Mysteries, 13 for the , 10 for the city , and 5 or 6 each for the , Scira, and Dipolieia; the Panathenaea also receive the lion's share of the illustrations (pis. 4-19). Deubner by contrast gave 31 pages to the Anthesteria, 22 to the Mysteries, 16 to the Dipolieia, 10 each to the Thesmophoria and the Scira, but only 4 pages to the city Dionysia and 13 to the Panathenaea. Parke's preference is for spectacle and recreation, Deubner's for the rural and primitive side of and ; both scant the religious significance of the Panathenaea. It is also true that the archaeological and epigraphic discoveries of recent years have bolstered the Panathenaea as weil as other festivals, but this increment is not reflected in Parke, who gives us no more than an enarratio of the frieze, of the fourth-century schedule of prizes, and of the Lycurgan law about the Lesser Panathenaea, and is unaware that the first half of this law has been available since 1959 (SEG 18.13, 21.269, 25.65). 2) The main ex professo treatments are F.Dümmler, RE 2.2 (1896) 1962-1966 s. Athena; A.Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (Leipsic 1898) 41-159; E.Pfuhl, De Atheniensium pompis sacris (Berlin 1900) 3-31; E.Fehrle, Die kul­ tische Keuschheit im Altertum (Giessen 1910) 179-183; P. Stengel, Die griechi­ schen Kultusaltertümec3 (Munich 1920) 221-226; L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Ber­ lin 1932) 22-35; L.Ziehen, RE 18.2.2 (1949) 457--489 s. Panathenaia 1; H. A. Thompson, AA 1961.224-231 (the games); J. A. Davison, From Ar­ chilochus to (London 1968) 28-69; A. Breiich, Paides e parthenoi (Rome 1969) 314-348; W.Burkert, Homo Necans (Berlin 1972) 173-177, cf. Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart 1977) 352-354; J. D. Mikalson, AJP 97 (1976) 141-153 (the origins); H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London 1977) 33-50. W. Fauth, KIPauly 4 (1972) 449--450 s. Panathenaia, supplies some further references. 3) Myiampling of opinion is drawn mainly from the works cited in n. 2 above, as folIows: Deubner 22-23, cf. 15-17, 35; Davison 29-34; Dümmler 1962-1963, 1965-1966; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic 1906) 87; Mommsen 155-159; Ziehen 488--489; Mikalson 149-153; Burkert passim. The Origin of the Panathenaea 233 subsumed in the Panathenaea. Deubner postulated an aneient Hauptfest other than the Arrhephoria, Plynteria, or Chalceia, pre­ sumably addressed to "the old palaee goddess of the king of ", the role whieh Deubner fleetingly diseerned behind all the other funetions and festivals of Athena. Davison like many others saw the Panathenaea refleeted in a Homerie passage, 11. 2.550-551, whieh ean only refer to the Seira (more of this below); without this warrant "the earliest form of the festival" vanishes entirely, and is unknowable in any ease, if, as Davison supposed, the sixth-eentury organizers introdueed "arehaizing" rites as well as fashionable eontests. Others have earried the proeess of redue­ tion still further. Dümmler held that fashioned the Panathenaea with his own hands out of elements taken from the Arrhephoria and the Plynteria. Nilsson, speaking not of Athens' Panathenaea but of similar festivals elsewhere, branded them all as late and derivative, arising from adesire to honour the goddess of the eitadel with popular rites whieh were strietly alien 10 her nature. Such eonjeetures as have been made about the original or the abiding signifieanee of the Panathenaea are very uneonvineing. Mommsen thought of a harvest festival honouring Athena as the true patron of agrieulture at Athens, later displaeed by Demeter; the harvest festival was subsequently re-interpreted and embroi­ dered as a "vietory festival" - why, he did not say. Ziehen quali­ fied Mommsen's view: the Ur-Athene, as disclosed by the studies of Wilamowitz and Nilsson, was no agrarian deity, but agrarian funetions might still be attaehed to the palaee goddess who pro­ teets both the king and his land. J. D. Mikalson has reeently suggested that the festival was onee addressed not to Athena but to Ereehtheus as a "pre-Greek" deity, a "divine ehild" represent­ ing the vegetation eycle; Ereehtheus and the Panathenaea are said to resemble Hyaeinthus and the Hyaeinthia_of . Different again is Burkert's view of the Panathenaea as a new-year's festival marking the symbolie restoration of the eivie order whieh was symbolieally dissolved by the festivals of Seirophorion, the Ar­ rhephoria, Scira, and Dipolieia; he finds that when these festivals are taken together, the full range of deities, of aetiologieal heroes and events, and even of saerifieial vietims, makes a pattern whieh refleets all the eonditions und values of eivilized life. Some eritieism of these views is needed, and will help us to understand the problem. They all invite one large objeetion in prineiple. It is generally reeognized, or should be, that ritual eom- 234 Noel Robertson

es first, and gives rise to myths and to the mythical features and attributes of the gods. Public festivals are the most conspicuous kind of ritual and recur widely in much the same form; the great gods are likely to be projections of the great festivals; witness Demeter and Kore above all. The Panathenaea are Athena's pre­ mier festival in Athena's favourite city, and the ritual- the proces­ sion under arms, the equestrian contests, the scenes of combat embroidered on the peplos - exactly matches the goddess' charac­ ter. The same or similar ritual elements are found in other festivals of Athena, to be examined below. Then why suppose that the Panathenaea or these other festivals are foisted on the goddess at a late date as a political expedient? Or why suppose that the original focus of the Panathenaea was something remote {rom both the ritual business and the goddess' character, namely agriculture? Such is the objection in principle - which also dictates a better method of interpretation, as we shall see in amoment. The agrarian hypothesis does not even fit the season of the Panathenaea, amid-summer lull in the farmer's routine. In the harvest came in Thargelion, roughly speaking, and was prob­ ably solemnized by the festival Calamaea of Attic inscriptions; the threshing came in Scirophorion, and was solemnized by the festi­ val Scira and the conveyance of threshed and winnowed corn from Scirum to the , from the sacred ploughland into the hands of Athena's millers; at the end of all these labours came the labourers' reward, the hilarity of the Cronia in early Hecatom­ baeon. From this moment until the ploughing and sowing of Pyanopsion the only agricultural rites were modest offerings on behalf of the seed corn (cf. SEG 26.136Iines 5-6, 13-14, offerings in Hecatombaeon and Boedromion as prescribed at Thoricus). The paradoxical attempts to connect Athena with agriculture or 4 fertility have been sufficiently refuted by others ); some of the bits of evidence subserving these attempts - Athena the "Mother" at Elis, Athena Hellotis at Corinth and elsewhere, the Arrhephoria or rather "Arrhetophoria", the nativity of Erechtheus and Erich­ thonius - will find another explanation below.

4) See Wilamowitz, Kleine Schriften 5.2 (Berlin 1939) 51; Nilsson, Ge­ schichte der griechischen Religion (Munich 21955, 1961 = 31967) 1.442--443. The most thprough-going exponents of a maternal Athena are Fehrle, Kult. Keuschheit 169-201; K. Kerenyi. Die Jungfrau und Mutter der griechischen Religion (Zurich 1952); and U.Pestalozza, RendIstLomb 89/90 (1956) 433--454. For Athena the "Mother" and Athena Hellptis see 11 below, for the Arrhephoria and the nativity stories, III-IV below. The Origin of the Panathenaea 235

The hypothesis of a festival honouring Erechtheus as a "di­ vine child" is the latest in the field and perhaps deserves more 5 attention for that reason ); at aB events Erechtheus must be reck­ oned with, for he figures largely in most accounts of the Panathenaea. The hypothesis requires us to discount the mass of evidence, including the very names "Panathenaea" or "Athenaea", pointing to Athena as the object of worship and to rely instead on 's notice of buBs and rams offered annuaBy to Erechtheus (11. 2.550-551), and also on the equation of Erech­ theus und Erichthonius that is so dear to modern mythologists. These items can be firmly set aside. Homer's offerings to Erech­ theus as also ' offerings to Athena Polias and Erech­ theus (5.82.3) and ' offerings to " surnamed Erechtheus" (Pap. Sorb. 2328 = Eur. Erechtheus fr. 65 Austin 6 lines 93-94) belong to the Scira, not the Panathenaea ). The Scira comprised both agrarian rites for Demeter (weB attested by many sources) and rites for certain deities of the Acropolis, notably Athena and Poseidon (so Lysimachides FGrHist 366 F 3) or else Erechtheus (so scho1. Ar. Ecc1. 18l). Poseidon and Erechtheus are here the same. The relationship between the two names and be­ tween the god and the "hero" is most naturaBy construed as foBows. Poseidon was worshipped from of old on the Acropolis, doubtless beside the great cleft on the north face leading to the Mycenaean weB, and doubtless as the power presiding over

5) Mikalson however has a predecessor, to whom he does not refer, in Jacoby, FGrHist IIIb Suppl. 2.509 n. 2 s. [in. While discussing the tradition of the Panathenaea apropos of Ister FGrHist 334 F 4, Jacoby "ventures a conjecture", namely that in early days the festival consisted chiefly of the chariot-race and honoured not Athena but "her foster-son and (later) cult-fellow Erichthonius­ Erechtheus", and that Hippocleides first made it "the State festival of Athena". 6) In all the direct evidence for the Panathenaea Erechtheus is never men­ tioned as receiving or other ritual honours, a stumbling block which has been skirted in different ways (Ziehen 470-474 is fullest) and is ignored by Mikal­ son. Mikalson repeatedly mistranslates the Homeric victims as "bulls and lambs", which sounds like avision of the millennium. 7) The god "Helius" worshipped on this and other occasions (Lysimachides loc. cit.; Theophr. De Piet. fr. 2.44 Pötscher; schol. Ar. Eq. 729, Plut. 1054) is probably a literary rendering of "Y:n:m:o(;;, whose altar stood at the entrance to the Erechtheium and was reserved for offerings like those recorded of Helius (Paus. 1.26.5) and whose cult was distinctive enough to be carried to Elea in haly in the fifth century; see M. Guarducci, ParPass 25 (1970) 254-256 no. 2, publishing a cippus inscribed ZT]vo[(;;] 'Y:n:a:tou ' A6T](vaiou). 236 Noel Robenson

8 underground waters ); this function gave hirn a place in two of the seasonal festivals of the corn, the Scira and the (Eust. 11. 9.530). "Erechtheus" is originally the "Thresher" personified (cf. III below), a mythical figure emblematic of the Scira, whose war with is one of many tales of violence which threshing evokes in the ancient world. But his name could also be heard as "Splitter" and was then equivalent to Poseidon, worshipped at the same festival. Literary and epigraphic sources abundantly show that offerings were made indifferently to Poseidon or Erechtheus or "Poseidon Erechtheus"; but in the fourth century or a little earlier, as Erechtheus' mythical celebrity reached its height, an orade enjoined separate sacrifices for Poseidon and Erechtheus (IG 22 1146, SEG 25.140; cf. Paus. 1.26.5). Returning to the Homeric passage, we find that the god and the mythical figure are already conflated: the sacrificial bulls and rams disdose the god Poseidon, but Erechtheus is sprung from the "fertile ploughland" 9 like the corn which he threshes ). Both Homer and Herodotus (speaking of a sixth-century practice) attest the importance and the renown of the Scira in early days, before the conditions of farm labour had changed, or before the changes had made them­ selves feit: in Classical times, when much of the work, above all the threshing, was done by slaves and hired men, the Scira and other seasonal festivals of the corn lost their meaning for the Athenian communityIO). About the equation of Erechtheus and Erichthonius it will be fitting to say more in III below, apropos of Erichthonius as the mythical founder of the Panathenaea. To put it briefly, this is a modern dogma with very little warrant in the ancient sources, who mostly keep the names, myths and rites aItogether separate. Unlike Erechtheus, Erichthonius remained a purely mythical fi-

. 8) On the siting of the Erechtheum K.Jeppesen's arguments and condu- slOns at AJA 83 (1979) 381-394 are entirely cogent and could be amplified. 9) The Homeric passage has been treated recently in studies of the rise of hero worship; see e.g. T. Hadzisteliou Price, Historia 22 (1973) 13&-137 and again in Arktouros, Hell. Stud. pres. to B. M. W. Knox (Berlin 1979) 224-226; J. N. Coldstream, JHS 96 (1976) 16. On any view of hero worshir it is peculiar; if the above account is right, it does not illustrate hero worship at al . Erechtheus was first worshipped as a hero in consequence of the orade or in aseparate cult of the tribai eponym, on which see U. Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen (Berlin 1976) 52-55. 10) The prevalence of slave labour on Athenian farms is demonstrated by M. H.Jameson, Cl 73 (1977/78) 122-145. , Op. 597, already speaks of hired hands at the threshing. The Origin of the Panathenaea 237

gure who was never taken up in cult. His story is firmly linked , with the Panathenaea, however; as infant and as adult he prefi­ gures the pannychis and the equestrian contests respectively; he was also drawn into the aition of the Arrhephoria and could be identified with Athena's sacred snake, more commonly projected as Cecrops. Nilsson in his reconstruction of "Minoan-" compared Erichthonius and Hyacinthus as putative inst­ ances of the "divine child"II), and thus gave a handle to Mikal­ son's theory of the Panathenaea and as equivalent festi­ vals honouring this divine child. Now the ritual background of the "divine child" has been variously conceived, and it seems unlikely that a single explanation will be found for the many figures of literature and art who have been or might be so called; it is therefore unwise to use the term in classifying festivals. At any rate there is no connexion or analogy between Erech­ theus or Erichthonius or the Panathenaea on the one hand and Hyacinthus or the Hyacinthia on the other. The Attic 'YmuVe(ÖE~ are deities worshipped at the hill 'Y(buveo~ (Phanodemus FGrHist 325 F 4; cf. Bekker, Anecd. 1.202) or the shrine 'Yax,LVeLOV (IG 22 1035 = Hesperia 44 [1975] 214 line 52)12); i. e. the place-name produces the cult tide (and since two of the group are called 'Avell(~ and Atyf..ll(~ at Apollod. BibI. 3 [212] 15.8.3, names evok­ ing flowers and blossoms, the place-name doubdess comes from the flower ). These deities were reputed to be daughters of Erechtheus, the hero of the Scira, only because their shrine lay in the area of Scirum (AolJo(a, eponym of the like-named deme, was of their number, according to Steph. Byz. s.v., and the mother Praxithea is daughter of ) and they were accord­ ingly propitiated in the festival, as we see from Euripides' Erech­ theus; it was quite inevitable that an alternative aition should re-

11) Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion2 (Lund 1949) 531-583, Gesch. der gr. Rel.2/3 1.315-324. At Gr. Feste 140, apropos of the Spartan Hyacin­ thia, Nilsson had already adduced the Attic Hyacinthides as demonstrating a con­ cern with fertility. 12) M. Ervin, Platon 11 (1959) 146-159, followed by G. R. Culley, Hesreria 46 (1977) 286 n. 14, identifies this shrine with the "public sanctuary 0 the " on the Hili of the Nymphs (IG 12 854), for no good reason. The parthenoi or korai worshipped at the hili Hyacinthus are not "nymphs" in any sense; "Geraestus the Cyclops", said to be buried on the site in the rival aition of ApolIod., is a narrative invention which may reflect an instrument of purification used in the Scira and also in the weather magic of the festival Geraestia (weather magic being the ' domain) and in the cult of childrearing nymphs called by similar names in several places. 238 Noel Robertson present t~'Ymuv8iöE~ as daughters of the Spart.an Hyacinthus .(Apollod. Bibi. loc. cit.). Finally, the ritual business of the Spartan Hyacinthia, so far as we know it, is very different from the Panathenaea; the similarities which Mikalson alleges are trivial or illusory13). There remains Burkert's view of the Panathenaea as a new­ year's festival re-consecrating the civic order. In general terms this view seems perfectly correct, for the Panathenaea fall in the first month of the year and resemble other new-year's festivals in being celebrated on a grand scale and in featuring such acts ofregenera­ tion as the bringing of new fire and the offering of a new robe. It is something of a puzzle that the festival comes at the end, not the beginning or the middle, of the first month; most public festivals come either at mid month, i.e. at the full moon, or in the second quarter, from the seventh onward. Moreover, two or three festi­ vals earlier in Hecatombaeon might be regarded as inaugurating certain aspects of civic life in the new year. The Hecatombaea of the seventh (as we may safely ass urne) are revealed by their aition, ' arrival in Athens and his recertion in die palace of Aegeus, to have been a festive gathering 0 the political and milit­ ary arms of the community for the purpose of recruiting new 14 members, adolescents and perhaps also aliens ). The Synoecia of the sixteenth are commonly supposed to commemorate the "syn­ oecism" of Attica, i.e. the ancient aition is taken at face value; it would be more sophisticated, and more respectful of the evidence contained in Nicomachus' law code (LSCG Suppi. 10 A 30-53), to interpret the Synoecia as the "rites of the combined houses", oIxOL being the "houses" or "lodges" of the , and to infer that the number and aspect of these phratries gave rise to all the anti­ quarian lore about the political organization of Attica before and

13) Mikalson simply adopts Nilsson's scheme for the Hyacinthia without Nilsson's reserves; the points of resemblance are said to be a banquet, a pannychis, and the offering of a garment. Yet the feasting and other entertainments at rural are quite unlike the civic splendours of the Panathenaea (and are de­ scribed by Polemon Fr. 86 Preller and by Polycrates FGrHist 588 F 1 as distinctive of Sparta); the pannychis and 's chiton are ascribed to the Hyacinthia only by conjecture. For reconstructions of the Hyacinthia which improve on Nilsson's in several respects see F.Bölte, RhM 78 (1929) 132-140, and Ziehen, RE 3A 2 (1929) 1518-1520, cf. 1456---1458, s. Sparta. 14) See F.Graf, MusHelv 36 (1979) 2-22, especially 13-19; I amend his results slightly in the formula given above, and also suppose that the worship of Apollo Delphinius is a Mycenaean heritage. The Origin of the Panathenaea 239

15 under Theseus ). And no doubt the Cronia as a farm holiday were a new-year's festival from another point of view. Why the Panathenaea should come later than these festivals we can only guess; possibly the date was adjusted for convenience in the sixth century, when other changes occurred. The Panathenaea then are a new-year's festival, and we shall soon address the obvious question, what power of the goddess of the citadel was to the fore at the new year? Burkert does not put this question, but deduces a broad pattern of dissolution and re­ turn to order, Aufläsung and neue Begründung, of civilized life. Yet the significance which is thus attached to old images of con­ flict and prowess and victory is secondary and accidental; those images once had a more immediate and concrete purpose, and so did all the ritual business, parading and sacrificing and the rest. Burkert hirnself at many points in his work has brought us dose to the unvarnished realities of ritual, which on the whole were more familiar to scholars of an earlier generation, to Nilsson and Dieterich and J. E. Harrison. Ritual is as diverse and incongruous as the rest of life, and must not be made to yield some over­ arching significance. So ml,lch by way of criticism. It is easy to see that the results obtained up to now are unsatisfactory; but can we improve on them? It will be objected that we know the festival only as it was celebrated from the fifth century onward, after it had undergone changes of uncertain extent. The objection is not compelling. The festival program, as already said, matches Athena's character as the armed goddess of the citadel, fierce, astute and vigilant; it may be added that Nilsson has traced this character to the Mycenaean period with unanswerable arguments, and that the apobates, the unique kind of chariot contest that was the leading event in the program, can hardly be understood save as a Mycenaean relic. Much other evidence points the same way. A goodly number of festivals of Athena are known elsewhere in the Greek homeland, especially in the Peloponnesus (11 below); some are arguably very old, none is obviously late; all show common features, and the features agree with the Panathenaea. Festivals of Athena are

15) R. T. Wade-Gery, Essays in Greek History (Oxford 1958) 86--115, espe­ cially 95-97 (an essay of 1931 which antedates the publication of the relevant fragment of Nicomachus' code), connected some details of the "synoecism" with the ritual of the Synoecia but did not draw the consequences, and no advance has since been made in this direction. 240 Noel Robertson agonistic festivals, and the games have a military flavour; there are processions under arms, contests in manliness, horse races and the like, just as in the Panathenaea. We may suppose that festivals of the warlike Athena were as uniform and as long established as festivals of Demeter the corn goddess, of the huntress, of Dionysus the progenitor of vine and fig, of Apollo the patron of public assemblies. The analogy of other festivals of Athena has been neglected in studies of the Panathenaea, and so has another form of evi­ dence, the myth of Erichthonius as the specific aition of the festi­ val (III-IV below). Every Greek rite or festival has its aition, which however fabulous and bizarre is still a faithful transcript of the actions and the mood of the worshippers; indeed, the more I6 bizarre the aition, the more revealing it will be ). The myth of Erichthonius runs parallel to certain other myths associated with festivals of Athena, and taken together they throw a flood of light on the ritual background. The story of Hephaestus' pursuing and assaulting Athena, with Erichthonius as the strange but valuable result, is not itself so very old; as we shall see, it probably arose in the mid sixth century, just when the festival was being refur­ bished. The god Hephaestus is yet another aspect of the problem of origins. He is by every token a late-comer to Athenian wor­ ship, both as a fire god at the Academy and as a god of crafts in the city; and he comes from a very alien milieu, being invested with the mystery of Pelasgian and with the ribaldry of Homer and A1caeus. Why was he received so cordially at Athens, and joined with Athena in the ancient rites of the Panathenaea and the Cha1ceia, and in the new dispensation of the Hephaestia? It was remarked above that the Panathenaea might be re­ garded as one of several new-year's festivals at Athens, renewing some activity or resource that was under the protection of the

16) It is easier to state the rule than to find examples that will be universally acknowledged. Nilsson used aitia frequentlyand to exemplary effect in Griechi­ sche Feste, but not so much in his later work; the survey in Gesch. der Gr. Rel. 213 1.26--35 is not fully representative. They have no place in Deubner's Attische Feste. Burkert in aseries of papers and in his book Homo Necans has found many important correspondences between myth and ritual, but the objective results are sometimes obscured by theoretical constructions. It seems to me mere ignorance of ritual that causes it to be discounted in recent and influential works on the topic of "myth" (and there has also been a blind revulsion against the obsolete doctrine of myths as ritual texts); there is perhaps no Greek myth, however embellished for literary or other purposes, that cannot be plausibly traced to ritual, and direct observation of ritual always continued to fertilize literary treatments. The Origin of the Panathenaea 241 goddess of the citadel. In what follows I shall argue that the Panathenaea and similar festivals elsewhere signalize the bringing of new fire for the new year; the fire is sacred to Athena as goddess of the citadel because it is so important for the welfare of the community, not only for the preparation of food and other domestic and social concerns, but for the technology of war. The martial games which follow the torch-race celebrate the new fire and exemplify its value. Hence too the myth of Erichthonius and the advent of Hephaestus. The producing and the bringing of the new fire are the procreation of Erichthonius and his nursing by Athena; these are common images for the new fire and have no­ thing to do with agrarian customs or fertility rites. In Hephaestus the Athenians discovered a deity of Panhellenie renown who per­ sonified the fire, and on Lemnos they discovered a fire festival honouring Hephaestus and comparable with the Panathenaea; therefore they adopted Hephaestus as their own.

II. Festivals o[Athena resembling the Panathenaea

Weshall first survey the older festivals of Athena (and of one congener) that resemble the Panathenaea significantly, proceeding in geographieal order throu~h Attica, the Peloponnesus, , and Thessaly. The survey will also acquaint us with a few aitia to be compared with the aition of the Panathenaea. 1) The renown and the opulence of the cuit of Athena Hel­ lotis at Marathon presuppose a public festival, which may have 17 been called either 'Ae~vaLu or 'EAAwn( ). At Od. 7.80 Athena withdraws from Phaeacia to Marathon and Athens, and in the calendar of the Marathonian Tetrapolis the offerings to Athena Hellotis are by far the richest of all, and there are greater and lesser celebrations, as of the Panathenaea, although the lesser celebration comes but every second year (IG 22 1358, LSCG 20). At the greater celebration the offerings are as follows: "for Athena Hel­ lotis an ox, 90 drachmas, three ewes, 33 drachmas, priestly emoluments, 6 drachmas; for Curotrophos a ewe, 11 drachmas, a

17) For the cult of Athena at Marathon see S. Solders, Die außerstädtischen Kulte und die Einigung Attikas (Lund 1931) 15; N. Yalouris, MusHelv 7 (1950) 62; P. Amandry, BCH 95 (1971) 625 n. 105; N. G. L. Hammond, Studies in Greek Hist!?ry (Oxford 1973) 187-189, from whom I take details of the topography and remams. 242 Noel Robertson young pig, 3 drachmas, priestly emoluments, 1 drachma; for the bearers ·of laurel branches, daphnephori, 7 drachmas" (B 35-39). At the lesser celebration they are: "for Athena Hellotis a ewe, 11 drachmas; for Curotrophos a young pig, 3 drachmas, priestly emoluments, 7Y2 obols" (B 41-42)18). Both the offerings and the processioners of i:he larger celebration are reminiscent of the Panathenaea. Moreover, the worship at Marathon comes in Hecatombaeon; it too is a sort of new-year's festival. The festival very likely included games, at least in early days. The Hellotia known to Pindar (01. 13.40) were connected with Athena Hellotis at Marathon by some commentators (schol. Pind. 01. 13.56a,d; cf. Et. Magn. s. 'EnW'tLC;); Pindar plainly meant the Corinthian festival (which is also dealt with in the scholia), but the comment seems to presuppose games at Marathon. Pindar re­ peatedly extols victories at Marathon (01. 9.89-90, 13.110, Pyth. 8.79), and though some of these are accounted for by the Herac­ leia (schol. Pind. 01. 9.134e, 137a; SEG 10.2)19), there is room for games in honour of Athena too, especially if the were newly founded in the early fifth century, as the fragmentary in­ scription, SEG 10.2, rather suggests (Pindar's victories however are of the 460's and the 440's). In later days, when the epigraphic record is copious, no games are heard of at Marathon, either for Athena or for , and indeed we might expect that the Panathenaea would eventually swallow up a local celebration oc­ curring at the same time of year. In any case a passage of Nonnus to be considered below indicates that at Marathon as at Corinth Athena Hellotis took a special interest in horsemanship. Athena's precinct, called the 'EAAumov at IG 22 1358 B 25, is securely located by an inscribed boundary stone (Praktika 1933.42) at the south-west corner of the plain of Marathon; if the stone was in situ or nearly so (and to judge from the freshness of the lettering it did not travel far), and if an enclosure wall and

18) The suppletion of "Athena Hellotis" elsewhere in the calendar, as re­ ceiving a young plg (A 56), is quite uncertain, and in any case should not have prompted speculation about the character of the goddess (cf. Solders Zoe. cit.). 19) S.Koumanoudis, AAA 11 (1978) 237-244 (cf. SEG 26.51, 28.25), now finds the Heracleia in a fifth-century epigram, but this (or any) interpretation of the fragment seems very insecure. The fourth-yearly civic Heracleia commonly re­ stored at [Arist.] Ath. 54.7 and Poil. 8.107 have been expunged by A. Wilhelm, Opuscula 8.2 (Leipsic 1974) 1-8. If the Heracleia of Dem. 19.86 are the Maratho­ nian, they came just at the end of Scirophorion or at the beginning of Hecatom­ baeon, as others have observed. The Origin of the Panathenaea 243

temple foundations belong to the cult, this was an extensive sanc­ tuary. Argos too had a shrine 'EA}..orttov ( 47 [1919] 162), but nothing more is known of it; perhaps it was identical with one of the several sanctuaries of Athena attested at Argos. The names 'EA}..onLc;, 'EA}..oruu recur at Corinth and at Gortyn in , and 'AA.OrtLu at Tegea; evidence for the forms 'AA.-, 'EA.- will be considered below. Whatever the reality behind the name, this 20 distribution takes it back to an early date ). Athena Hellotis of Marathon was once a powerful independent deity, probably coev­ al with the Mycenaean remains on the acropolis nearby21). To suppose that the trappings of her cult were borrowed from the 22 Panathenaea is perverse ). Aversion of the Erichthonius story was attached to the cult and festival of Athena Hellotis at Marathon; more surprisingly, yet another version was attached to the cult of at neigh­ bouring Rhamnus. It will be necessary to examine in some detail the evidence for locating the stories at Marathon and Rhamnus. The evidence for Marathon comes from Nonnus' Dionysia­ ca. Nonnus gives the name "Erechtheus" to the commander of the Athenian contingent in Dionysus' Indian expedition; he is the posterity of an earlier "Erechtheus", whose miraculous origin is repeatedly described or alluded to; the first bearer of the name sprang from the earth after Hephaestus assaulted Athena and spilt his seed, and he was carried to Athena's "maiden-chamber" where the goddess suckled hirn by lamplight (13.172-179, 27.111-117, 317-323, 29.336-339, 33.123-125, 39.206, 41.63-64, 48.956). This earlier "Erechtheus" is of course otherwise known to literature and art as "Erichthonius". In Erechtheus the captain of Dionysus' army Nonnus means us to recognize Erechtheus the king of Athens famous for warring against Eleusis, for Erechtheus the king is elsewhere said to be either the son of Erichthonius (Eur. Ion 265-274, 999-1007), or, quite commonly, the grandson . (Marm. Par. FGrHist 239 A 10-12, etc.). Nonnus therefore evokes the famous Athenian story of Erichthonius, and nearly aH the passages cited above are fuHy conformable with the Athenian setting, which as we shaH see in III-IV below spans the Academy

20) See A. Lesky, WS 45 (1927) 152-173,46 (1928) 48-68,107-129 (unpro­ fitable speculation); Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Basel 21955 = 31959) 1.382-384 (a sharp antidote). 21) See R. Hope Simpson, (Park Ridge, N.]. 1981) 51. 22) So Deubner, Att. Feste 27.

16 Rhein. Mus. f. PhiloL 128/3-4 244 Noel Robertson and the Acropolis; moreover, one or two of the passages seem to a passage of Callimachus in which the story is plainly linked with the Acropolis and Lycabettus (fr. 260 Pfeiffer; HSCP 72 [1967] 131, lines 20-29)23). Yet at two points Nonnus refers to Marathon as the setting. At 27.317-323 Zeus rouses Hephaestus to join the batde by recalling his ties with Athena and the Athenians. "And you, Hephaestus, maiden-Ioving bridegroom of procreative earth, do you sit still and care nothing for Marathon, where gleams the wedding torch of the unwedded goddess?" There follows men­ tion of the ever-burning lamp, of the maiden-chamber and the ehest containing the offspring of Earth and Hephaestus, and of Athena's nursing. At 48.951-968 a child of Dionysus deserted by its mother is reared at Athens amid mystic revels to which Athe­ na, Dionysus und Eleusis all contribute. He is suckled by Athena in her temple, just like Erechtheus (954-957), "and the goddess entrusted hirn to Eleusinian Bacchants" (958), whose ministra­ tions are thus described: "round the boy the ivy-bearing wives of Marathon circled in the dance, and for the new-born deity they raised the night-revelling Attic pine" (959-961). In this eclectic fantasy (in which Nonnus expressly recognizes three av­ atars of Dionysus at lines 962-965) the women at Marathon, com­ ing just after mention of Erechtheus and receiving the infant from Athena, must be interpreted in the light of the passage previously cited (for Marathon was not renowned for any cult of Dionysus): the worshippers of Athena Hellotis conducting a pannychis are momentarily assimilated to Bacchants. Thus Nonnus, a poet of very miscellaneous learning, knew not only the familiar story of Erichthonius but another which was laid at Marathon. He was sometimes addled by his learning, and the name "Erechtheus" in place of "Erichthonius" might be only amistake. Quite conceivably, however, it was Nonnus' source who used this name for the prodigy of Marathon, to distinguish it from the prodigy of Athens; for a similar aition deducible at Rhamnus also makes play with "Erechtheus", as we shall see in a moment. Another mention of Marathon by Nonnus suggests a diffe­ rent aspect of the cult. Erechtheus the commander drives a pair of horses which were sired by Boreas and then given by hirn to the

23) For the echoes see H. Lloyd-Jones and J. Rea, HSCP 72 (1967) 136-137. The Origin of the Panathenaea 245 earlier Erechtheus as the bride-price for Oreithyia (37.155-161); this team is afterwards called "Marathonian" (37.322). Possibly the rape of Oreithyia was sometimes told so as to represent the girl and her father as natives of Marathon; for according to Simonides Oreithyia was carried off from Brilessus (fr. 534 Page), i.e. Pentelicum, the mountain overlooking Marathon. Or poss­ ibly the horses' epithet points back to the birth story. A third possibility, however, is rreferable to either of these. Erechtheus the commander speaks 0 his "Marathonian" team while invoking Athena's aid in a chariot race; and in the sequel Athena as patron of horsemanship gives victory to Erechtheus over Scelmis son of Poseidon, Poseidon being the other divine patron of horseman­ ship. Very likely then it is the goddess of Marathon, Athena Hel­ lotis, whom Erechtheus is supposed to be addressing; as we shall see below, the main concern of Athena Hellotis at Corinth is horses and horse-races, and the same may be presumed of her Marathonian avatar. To sum up briefly, Athena Hellotis at Marathon was perhaps as old as Athena Polias at Athens, and the customs were similar. At Marathon as at Athens the festival in Hecatombaeon was cele­ brated on a larger scale in every fourth year, with processioners carrying boughs and with sacrifice of ox and sheep; there was a pannychis, and there may have been games, with horsemanship to the fore. Here as at Athens observers said that Hephaestus pro­ duced a marvellous creature from the earth, to be nursed by Athe­ na in her temple. 2) Nemesis of Rhamnus is the most enigmatic of deities, bearing a name which is a common noun in Homer (but of unusu­ al form and meaning) and a moralizing personification in the Cyp­ ria (but with fabulous attributesf4). It is likely however that the name "Nemesis" for the deity of Rhamnus is secondary, for a fifth-century dedication is rather cautiously addressed "to this goddess here, who possesses this precinct here" (IG 12 828); the name suited the deity, arid so did the story of Nemesis in the Cypria, which was surely not inspired in the first instance by this

24) "Nemesis as a eult goddess still seems to me to be an unsolved riddle", said Nilsson, The Myeenaean Origin of (Berkeley 1932) 170, apropos of views linking Nemesis with a eyele of aneient deities and myths in north-east Attiea. For the eult at Rhamnus see Solders, Ausserst. Kulte 67-69; H. Herter, RE 16.2 (1935) 2346--2352 s. Nemesis; J. Pouilloux, La forteresse de Rhamnonte (Paris 1954). 246 Noel Robertson

5 remote culr ). The story would suit a deity of the type of Athe­ na26), for Nemesis like Athena is fierce and proud and unwilling to consort with an amorous god, and she flees while he pursues. Moreover, the sequel has some resemblance to the Erichthonius story. The intercourse and the delivery are of a surprising kind - a goose trodden by a gander, and an egg laid in the wild27). The offspring are nursed by another, namely Leda (she "gave the breast" to Helen, says Paus. 1.33.7). And the egg containing the offspring is laid upon a blazing altar in aseries of red-figure vase­ paintings of the late fifth and fourth centuries (Brommer, Vasen­ listen zur gr. Heldensage3 514-515); Erichthonius, we should re­ member, was concealed in a chest or basket and nursed by lamp­ light in Athena's temple. In view of these similarities between Nemesis and Athena it is of interest that an aition of the cult at Rhamnus gives us "Erech­ theus" again, said to be a son of Nemesis who established the cult after his mother had ruled as queen in the area (Suda, Phot. s. 'PU!!VOUOtU NE!!EOLi;; schol. Dem. 18.38; Paroemiogr. Gr. 2.769 Leutsch). No father is named, and as a queen ruling in her own right Nemesis had no husband. So at Rhamnus too Erechtheus was probably the outcome of a pursuit and an assault, but of Nemesis, not Athena. Rhamnus had a festival NE!!EOW which was interrupted by warfare in the 230's and then resumed with a subvention from a Macedonian commander (Moretti, Iscr. Stor. EU. 25 lines 27-30). Tothis festival we may ascribe both the athletic and choregic contests for men and boys attested in the early third century (IG 22 3109, cf. 3108) and the torch-race, probably of ephebes, attested in the late fourth century (IG 22 3105 line 3)28).

25) In the case of , worshipped beside Nemesis from the fourth century (IG 22 4638, etc.), Rhamnus plainly draws on the Cypria, not the reverse. 26) The cult statue wore a crown with figures of Victory, but other features of the statue and of the goddess' reputation are admittedly c10ser to Artemis or . B. Petracos, BCH 105 (1981) 227-253, has made significant progress in assembling the fragments of the base. 27) W. Luppe, Philologus 118 (1974) 193-202, shows that the swan as a guise for Zeus had no part in the original story. 28) IG 22 3105 has been re-edited by Pouilloux, Forteresse 111-114, and by O. W. Reinmuth, The Ephebic Inscriptions of the Fourth Century B.C. (Leyden 1971) 51-55. The fifth-century dedication already noticed, IG 12 528, is inscribed on a base which supported the statue of a boy - hardly the victor in a torch-race, as the excavator, Stais, suggested. The Origin of the Panathenaea 247

To sum up, Nemesis at Rhamnus was a deity akin to Athena, worshipped with an· agonistic festival, including a torch-race. Ob­ servers said that Nemesis like Athena was pursued by an admirer, and astrange encounter produced a marvellous creature, either Erechtheus or the egg containing Helen et al., who were nursed by another after the egg was warmed upon an altar. 3) The 'EA,A,WtLa of Corinth, a festival of Athena Hellotis, 29 included a torch-race and both athletic and equestrian contests ). The torch-race of young men, VEaVLm, must have been a leading event, for it is singled out in the brief mention of the festival at schol. Pind. 01. 13.56c. A full range of athletic contests will have accompanied the foot-race in which Pindar's victor excelled (01. 13.40). The equestrian contests follow from the Bellerophon story; the festival was said to commemorate the bridling of Pegasus ·(schol. Pind. 01. 13.56c), and it was precisely Athena Hellotis who gave assistance to the hero (ibid. schol. d; Et. Magn. s. 'EnWtL~). The starting lines of two successive race-courses (for foot races) have been excavated at Corinth towards the eastern end of the area that became the Roman forum. Some votive fig­ urines and plaques - stelae twined with snakes, horses and riders, reclining heroes, standing goddesses, and so on - were built into a wall supporting a terrace nearby. The race course and the votive objects have been connected with Athena Hellotis by the ex­ cavators, but in the absence of more specific indications this can only be a rather wistful conjecture. Pindar's scholia give another aition besides the Bellerophon story, in two slightly different versions. During the Dorian sack of Corinth women sought refuge in the temple of Athena Hel­ lotis; when this too was burned by the , most of the women escaped, but two sisters, Eurytione and Hellotis, were burned up together with an unnamed infant; plague ensued, and the cult and festival were established - despite the pre-existing temple - as a remedy (schol. Pind. 01. 13.56c). Or else it was just Hellotis who threw herself into the fire at the end; but Chryse, the young, or youngest, sister whom she had "snatched up" and 30 taken to the temple with her ), was perhaps also conceived as a victim, equivalent to the infant in the other version (ibid. schol. b). Once again, as with the nursing of Erichthonius and the hatch-

29) For the Corinthian cult and festival see Nilsson, Gr. Feste 94-95; O. Broneer, Hesperia 11 (1942) 128-161; E.Will, Korinthiaka (Paris 1955) 129-143. 30) "ri]v VEUV "ri]v XQuoijv 1] 'EAAOl"tt~ aQltuouou: VEOl"tu"tllv Wilamowitz. 248 Noel Robenson ing of Nemesis' egg, we have both a child and a fire on sacred 31 ground ). Thus the Hellotia of Corinth can show a program - torch­ race, athletic and equestrian contests - which is like the Panathenaea, and a pair of aitia - a child consumed by fire in a temple, and Bellerophon bridling Pegasus - which are like the stories of the infant and the adult Erichthonius. 4) The 'AAO)'tLU of Tegea were an agonistic festival which made use of a stadium near the temple of Athena Alea (Paus. 8.47.4). This setting and the context in bespeak a festi­ val of Athena, and the name 'AAOYUU can be safely equated with 'EAAOltLU; the form in 'AA- was probably current at Corinth too, for although Pindar's scholia are bound to speak of 'EAAOltLU, 'EnU)'tLc; so as to agree with Pindar, one of the aitia derives the festival name from 'AA~'nlC; the Dorian conqueror of Corinth (schol. Pind. 01. 13.56b), a derivation inappropriate to the form 32 in 'En_ ). The aition of the Halotia recalls the "capture", EtAOV, of Spartan soldiers; warfare, which recurs in the aitia at Elis and Pellene (see below), was doubdess suggested by some military aspect of the festival, e.g. a procession under arms. Moreover, the tide '!nnLU which Athena bore at Corinth (Pind. 01. 13.82) was likewise given to the cult statue in the temple of Alea and ex­ plained from the gigantomachy, when Athena drove a chariot against Enceladus (Paus. 8.47.1). Yet it is not expressly stated that the Halotia belonged to Athena Alea, and the inference is not quite straightforward, inasmuch as Athena Alea was honoured by anothet agonistic festival, and another cult of Athena existed else­ where iL -regea. The other agonistic festival, conducted in the same stadium, was thc 'AMmu (Paus. 10e. cit.), which had a wider reputation, appearing in several victory lists of Hellenistic date (IG 5.2.142; 1G

31) Nilsson thought of the Hellotia as a fire festival, fahresfeuer, like the Daedala of Plataea and other instances in which puppets are thrown into the flames. But since the bonfires of fire festivals are constructed out of doors in some special setting, it is then hard to see why the Corinthian aition situates the fire within Athena's temple. And the aitia of undoubted fire festivals - of the Daedala, of the Septerium at , of the Laphria at Hyampolis, of ' festival at Titane and of Heracles' on Oeta - are all very different from ours. 32) A form ""EAW'tLe; perhaps existed at Marathon, where the name was traced to €AOe; (schol. Pind. 01. 13.56a,d; Et. Magn. s. 'EAAW'tLe;). Note too 'EAW6e; as a "Dorian" name for Hephaestus (Hsch..s.v.), and 'EAWQEUe; as son of Hephaestus (schol. 11. 5.609); all these names may be derived from a word meaning "fire"; cf. n. 71 below. The Origin of the Panathenaea 249

4.12 629; IvPerg 156; cf. schol. Pind. 01. 7.153e?3). This festival obviously goes with the cult of Athena Alea nearby, and it may have included the ritual washing of the goddess' robe that gives rise to the myth of Auge34). After treating Athena Alea Pausanias points to Athena Poliatis, the goddess of the citadel whose sanctu­ ary lay on one of the low hills to the north (8.47.5). Yet the worship here was perhaps no older than the synoecism of Tegea in the Archaic period; whereas the site of Alea's temple was occupied 35 or visited in Mycenaean times ). Surely a cult so ancient and renowned might be credited with two agonistic festivals. And indeed the cult is expressly said to have incorporated different elements; for the statue of Athena Hippia came, together with the story of the gigantomachy, from the oudying community of Manthyrea36); an ancient statue proper to the Tegean cult, a work of Endoeus, was to be seen in Rome, not Tegea, having been removed by Augustus. Thus it is very likely that the synoecism of Tegea led to the merging of separate cults and festivals of Athena Alea and Athena Halotis/Hippia. Since Manthyrea contributes the statue of Athena Hippia and so perhaps the festival Halotia, it is worth mentioning that at a sanctuary beside the Manthuric plain Pausanias heard of the mar­ vellous suckling of a marvellous child; begot a boy Aeropus on Aerope daughter of Cepheus, and when the mother expired in childbirth, he caused her breasts to yield milk nonetheless; hence the tide 'A

33) A votive capital erected at the Argive Heraeum in the late sixth century records victories at Nemea, Tegea, Cleitor and Pellene (IG 4.510, ]effery, LSAG p. 169 no. 16); the Tegean games may have been either the Halotia or the Aleaea. 34) Auge's connexion with the ritual washing, already intimated by the Pompeian scenes of her undoing and by the analo~y of Aglauros at Athens, is now made explicit by the papyrus hypothesis to Eunpides' Auge (Pap. Colon. 264). L. Koenen, ZPE 4 (1969) 7-18, who publishes the hypothesis, argues for the festival Aleaea, but not conclusively. In Attica and the Ionian domain there was a separate festival named from the "washing" of the robe, and so there may have been at Tegea too; thou~h it does seem that the washing of the robe or the bathing of the statue was sometlmes part of a more extensive celebration. 35) See Hope Simpson, Myc. Greece 85. 36) Bölte, RE 14.1 (1928) 1255--1256, s. Manthurea, finds a possible site for the settlement Manthyrea and the shrine of Athena Hippia. 250 Noel Robertson

To sum up, the Halotia of Tegea resembled both the Hellotia of Corinth and the Panathenaea. There were athletie and equest­ rian eontests, and stories of war and of the gigantomaehy, and just possibly of a marvellous ehild. 5) The 'ASaVULa of Sparta were addressed to Athena Poliaehos, goddess of the eitadel, and included athletie eontests and horse and ehariot raees (IG 5.1.213 = Moretti, Iser. Ag. Gr. 16 = Jeffery, LSAG p. 201 no. 52, lines 10,65,67,75, Damonon's vietory list of the later fifth eentury?7). As in the Panathenaea the eitizens paraded under arms to the aeropolis, where saerifiee was offered (Polyb. 4.35.2). 6) A festival of Athena at Elis was noted for a men's beauty eontest, aywv xanou~ (Ath. 13.90, 609F-610A, eiting Theophras­ tus, Dionysius of Leuetra, and Myrsilus FGrHist 477 F 4; Ath. 13.20, 565F), the beauty doubtless eonsisting in size, strength, and feature (cf. Xen. Mem. 3.3.12-13?8). The vietors were erowned with myrtle and reeeived posts of honour in the festival proees­ sion. The first-plaee winner earried Athena's armour, the seeond­ plaee winner eondueted the saerifieial ox, and the third-plaee win­ ner earried the other saerifieial offerings. This eustom resembles the men's beauty contest, aywv EuavöQ(a~, at the Panathenaea, and reminds us that two kinds oflrize are attested for this eontest ­ shields ([Arist.] Ath. 60.3) an an ox (IG 22 2311 line 75). At Elis Theophrastus mistook the armour whieh the vietor carried in proeession for the vietor's prize, no doubt because he was familiar with the prize shields at Athens. The old men who earried olive boughs at the Panathenaea were also "chosen", EXAEyOV'tUL (Xen. Symp. 4.17), obviously in a separate beauty eontest for their age group, so that the myrtle erowns at Elis ean be compared with the SanO

37) See Nilsson, Gr. Feste 90-91; Ziehen, RE 3A 2 (1929) 1455, 1509, s. Sparta. 38) For the Elean festival see Nilsson, Gr. Feste 94, who resolves the slight contradiction between Theophrastus and the other authorities. 39) Deubner, Att. Feste 29, and Ziehen, RE 18.3 (1949) 484 s. Panathenaia 1, object to a beauty contest for the old men, but on no convincing grounds. The Origin of the Panathenaea 251 the Worker, 'EQyavT]. Outside the city, at a place called Bady, "Sweet Water", Pausanias records a sanctuary of Athena the Mother and an aition about war and a sudden mating of men and women (5.3.2); if the worship here was part of the civic festival, the main elements of the Panathenaea are repeated at Elis. After Heracles' invasion, says Pausanias, Elis had no men of . military age, and the women prayed to conc.eive as soon as they consorted with their husbands; the mating took place at Bady with the desired result, and was commemorated by the cult of Athena the Mother. Now as everyone knows, mythical matings may sometimes reflect the very thing in the service of agrarian fertility, as when a chosen man and woman copulate in a newly ploughed field; the Elean aition has often been interpreted in this 40 sense, with large consequences for Athena's reputation ). Yet the details of the aition do not really point this way. Instead of a mythical couple we have a concourse of all Elean men and wo­ men, who cannot be conjoindy engaged in a fertility rite. Nor are the women concerned with fertility as such, either agrarian or human; there is no famine or plague or miscarrying, the obverse of fertility which we find in myths of Demeter and Dionysus; instead the women's purpose is to restore the military levy. The aition is best understood as follows. Suppose that the citizens of Elis and their wives paraded from the city to Bady and conducted a pannychis, the sort of nocturnal revel that might lead (at least in imagination) to promiscuity, as we know from New Comedy. And sUfPose further that the men paraded under arms, or else that a seque to the rites at Bady was a procession under arms, perhaps also the carrying of armour to Athena on the acropolis. These elements are similar to the worship of Athena elsewhere, and given the story of Heracles' sack of Elis, might well inspire Pausanias' aition. No doubt the "mothers" of Elis prayed sepa­ rately at Bady on behalf of Elis' military arm; this explains Athena's tide and does not imply any interest in fertility. To sum up, the festival at Elis honoured the warrior goddess of the acropolis (portrayed as another Athena Parthenos) and in­ cluded a men's beauty contest and a procession with offerings emblematic of this goddess; if we may appeal to Pausanias' aition, the men marched under arms. 40) See e.g. Fehde, Kult. Keuschheit 183-184; Deubner, Au. Feste 16; Kerenyi, Jungfrau und Mutter 20. Nilsson, Gesch. der gr. RePf3 1.443-444, while rejecting views of a maternal or agrarian Athena, could find no explanation for the tide and aition at Elis. 252 Noel Robertson

7) The festival of Athena KOQLU at Cleitor, called either KOQLUOLU (so the inscriptions) or ~6QELU (schol. Pind. 01. 7.153a,e), included both athletic and equestrian contests41 ). The games at Cleitor are first mentioned by an Argive victor of the late sixth century (IG 4.510 = Jeffery, LSAG p. 169 no. 16); later inscriptions attest several athletic events (IG 7.47, ; BCH 10 [1890] 326-327, Tralles; Robert, Op. Min. SeI. 2.1094-1095, Perge), and since Athena Koria like Erichthonius invented chariots (Cic. Nat. Deor. 3.59; Harp. s. 'IJtJeLu, citing Mnaseas EV EUQWJtl']L, says the same of Athena Hippia), the festival was once known for chariot races. The sanctuary lay on a mountaintop some way off from the city (Paus. 8.21.4); the setting is also reflected in the genealogy which makes Koria daughter of Zeus and KOQuCPiJ (Cic. loc. cit.; Athena Hippia was daughter of Poseidon and Coryphe). 8) A festival of Athena at Pellene with several features of interest here can be deduced from a "strategem" of Polyaenus (8.59)42). During a siege of the city "Athena's priestess, following the custom for that day, put on a panoply and a three-crested helmet, and thus attired and being the loveliest and tallest of the maidens, looked out from the acropolis upon the multitude of citizens under arms"; the enemy thought that Athena had come to help Pellene. Here is a festival of the warlike Athena in which the citizens are assembled under arms in front of the acropolis; a procession has obviously gone before, and a sacrifice will follow. The seeming epiphany was compared by Nilsson with the ruse by which Peisistratus made hirnself appear Athena's favourite, and he inferred that the city-protecting goddess was sometimes impersonated by her priestess. Although Polyaenus invites this interpretation, there may be another which agrees beuer with the attested facts of ritual. It was customary to exhibit or convey the Palladium, the ancient wooden image of the armed Athena43), and

41) See Nilsson, Gr. Feste 91; L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta 2 (Amster­ dam 1969) 1095; R. Stiglitz, Die Grossen Göttinnen Arkadiens (Vienna 1967) 100, 106-107. 42) See Nilsson, Gr. Feste 91. The Aetolian attack on Pellene was narrated differently by Aratus, FGrHist 231 F 2, but this is no reason to discount the ritual details in Polyaenus, as Ernst Meyer does, RE 19.1 (1937) 357, 363, 365 s. Pellene 1; the attack, memorable as it was, came to be associated in spite of history with a festival which itself evoked the alarms of war. 43) The conveyance of the Palladium between Athens and Phalerum has been studied by Burkert, ZRGG 22 (1970) 356-368, together with the Demophon story; but Peisistratus' ruse is not mentioned. The Origin of the Panathenaea 253 a fanciful observer might trace the custom to an occasion when the goddess was impersonated for some momentary end, either by a priestess (as at Pellene) or by a lay person (as in Peisistratus' ruse). At any rate this was a major civic festival which included a procession under arms; whether games were held we cannot say. 9) Athena Itonia at Coroneia was a warlike deity, variously represented with helmet, aegis, shield, spear, and a familiar snake, and the Pamboeotia were a proud national festival like the 44 Panathenaea ). The games were both athletic and equestrian. A pannychis is implied by another "strategem" of Polyaenus (7.43). 10) Games of Athena Itonias in Thessaly are attested by Cal­ limachus (H. Cer. 74-75); since the "Ormenidae" brought an invitation to Erysichthon, they were perhaps held at Orminium or Pagasae, and were deemed to be very old. These are the festivals of the Greek homeland which the prima facie evidence aligns with the Panathenaea. Some other cults of Athena and some cults or festivals of kindred deities (be­ sides Nemesis at Rhamnus) might be brought into the pattern by plausible conjecture, but this would not greatly strengthen the present argument. The points of resemblance can be summarized as follows. The warrior goddess of the citadel (or occasionally of some other quarter) is honoured with distinctive rites, which fall just at the new year at Marathon - and perhaps everywhere else, for aB we know. There is a pannychis (Marathon, Elis?, Coroneia), and a great procession of the whole citizen body; the men march under arms (Sparta, Elis?, Pellene) and officiants bear offerings em­ blematic of the goddess (Marathon, Elis). The agonistic events include a torch-race (Rhamnus, Corinth), a men's beauty contest (Elis), and both athletic and equestrian events (Marathon?, Corinth, Tegea, Sparta, Cleitor, PeBene, Coroneia, Orminium?). The aitia give us the invention of horsemanship (Corinth) or of chariots (Cleitor) or Athena driving her chariot (Tegea), and also the birth and fostering of a marveBous creature (Marathon, Rhamnus, Tegea?, Cleitor) or a conflagration which consumes an infant (Corinth).

44) See A.Sehaehter, Cults of Boiotia (BICS Suppl. 38, 1981) 1.117-127, a full treatment whieh makes it unneeessary to eite the evidenee here. 254 Noel Robertson

III. Erichthonius, Erechtheus, and the Cecropids In IV below we shall come to the story of Erichthonius' birth and nursing and of his founding the Panathenaea - of how he invented and drove the first chariot and established the first games and appointed the first basket-bearers and bearers of olive boughs and set up the first statue of Athena and built her first temple. All this is the aition of the Panathenaea. As inventor and founder Erichthonius is expressly linked with the festival; his birth and nursing are not, but the mise-en-scene leaves no doubt, as we shall see. Between the birth and the nursing there is an inter.mediate stage, Erichthonius concealed in a basket and discovered by the Cecropids; this stage was added later to form the aition of a lesser festival of Athena, the Arrhephoria. By some accounts Erechtheus is likewise sprung from the earth, and in the line of Athens' kings he is enrolled as the son or grandson of Erichthonius; yet the stories about Erechtheus and his family go with the Scira, not the Panathenaea as we saw in I above. Before proceeding further we must dispose of Erechtheus as a seeming doublet of Erichthonius and explain why the Cecropids have intruded in the story. This can be done in summary fashion; the evidence is copious and familiar and accessible, and need be cited only for a few points. 4S First Erechtheus ). His role in the Scira was treated in I above, and it was remarked that the equation of Erechtheus and Erichthonius is mainly due to modern theorists. Among ancient writers , in a compendious reference to the birth and nursing and to the war against Eleusis, attaches both to "Erech­ theus" (Mem. 3.5.10), and the biographer of the Ten Orators speaks of the ancestor of the clan Butadae as son of Earth and Hephaestus ([Plut.] Vit. X Or. 843E); both are prey to inadvert­ ence. Nonnus is more misleading, for although he faneies the story of Erichthonius' birth and nursing, he repeatedly uses the name "Erechtheus"; but as we saw in II above, apropos of the festivals at Marathon and Rhamnus, the choice is understandable and may even have conformed with the Marathonian version of the story. For the rest the names are interchanged or identified by late sourees, mainly grammatical notices, which have no authori­ 46 ty at aIl ). Against this we can set the nearly uniform testimony of literature and art, as follows. 45) Much the fullest account of Erechtheus, taking in Erichthonius roo, is Kron, Phylenheroen 32-83. 46) These sources are listed by Escher-Bürkli, RE 6.1 (1907) 410 s. Erech­ theus 1. The Origin of the Panathenaea 255

1) The two names 'EQEXeEU~ and 'EQLXe6vLO~ are perfectly transparent and altogether different; it is astonishing to see it stated in everl modern handbook that the one is an altered form 4 of the other ). Ancient grammarians did better, correctly deriv­ ing 'EQEXeEU~ from EQELXW and 'EQLXe6vLO~ from xewv, though with fanciful interpretations. 'EQELXW was inevitably heard as Poseidon's "rending" of the Acropolis rock; but a common mean­ ing of the word was to "crack" or "grind" vegetables or corn (LS] s.v. I 2; there are a dozen derivative nouns and adjectives for garden and kitchen products), and the frequentative form EQEXeW meant to "thresh" corn, as we see from its metaphorical use at 11. 23.317; given the season and the rites of the Scira, 'EQEXeEU~ can only be the "Thresher". It is generally and quite feasibly agreed that 'EQLXe6vLO~ shows the intensive prefix EQL- and means "He of the very earth" or "He who is truly of the earth". 2) Erechtheus and Erichthonius are separately lodged on the Acropolis. Erechtheus has his own precinct and shrine, adjoining the deft opened by Poseidon's and overlying the "sea"j precinct and shrine are variously called ö6!-to~, va6~,

47) Most authorities, including Frisk and Chantraine in their respective dictionaries, take "Erechtheus" as a short form of "Erichthonius", which they correctly derive from EQL-, X8wv. H. Usener, Götternamen (Bonn 1895) 140-141, correctly derives "Erechtheus" from EQeeXfLV but regards "Erichthonius" as an equivalent form with another element, EQLX-X8ov-LO; his rendering "sod­ breaker", vervactor, is not so different from ancient views of Erechtheus. Mikal­ son, AJP 97 (1976) 141 n. 1, considers "Erichthonius" a "secondary formation" after "Erechtheus"; the logic of this is hard to see. 48) Cf. Jeppesen, AJA 83 (1979) 394 n. 68, citing H. A. Thompson. 49) c.J. Herington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias (Manchester 1955) 20, speaks of "the universal testimony of antiquity ... that Athena and Erechtheus shared the same temple on the Acropolis", but there is no such testimony, only circular argument. For the "house", "temple", etc., of Erechtheus as aseparate 256 Noel Robertson the perspective of time the conglomerate "" will be seen as one of the stranger aberrations of modern scholarship. Erichthonius on the other hand either lies buried in Athena's tem­ ple, like Cecrops (Apollod. BibI. 3 [191] 14.6.7; Marc. Sid. IG 14.1389 II 28-29; Clem. Protr. 3.45; Arnob. Adv. Nat. 6.6), or becomes the snake coiled beside Athena's shield (Paus. 1.24.7; Hyg. Astr. 2.13). 3) As mythical figures Erechtheus and Erichthonius differ 50 completely from the outset ). Erechtheus the ancient and worthy king is known not only to Euripides but to red-figure painters, who show him at the death of Procris or at the rape of Oreithyia­ or at the birth of Erichthonius (Berlin F 2537, ARV2 1268.2)! Erichthonius the marvellous offspring of Earth and Hephaestus is taken back to the sixth century by literary references, and the presentation or the discovery of the infant is a favourite subject of red-figure painting (Brommer, Vasenlisten zur gr. Heldensage3 262-263). Erechtheus and Erichthonius are juxtaposed and distin­ guished in Euripides' Ion and on the Berlin vase above men­ tioned. From Erechtheus we turn to the Cecropids, the three girls to whom Athena entrusted the basket containing Erichthonius, with unhappy results. In some vase-paintings the infant or the basket is simply presented to Athena or Cecrops, but others show a scene of confusion and alarm: the basket has just been opened, and the infant and the snakes are revealed, and the girls run off. In the story of Erichthonius, of his birth and nurture and handiwork, the prying Cecropids are a pointless complication. The story is com­ plete without them. We may infer that when the aition of the Panathenaea was already familiar, observers of another rite were reminded of the infant Erichthonius, and explained the rite ac-

entity see Od. 7.81; Hdt. 8.55; Dion. HaI. Ant. Rom. 14.2; [Plut.] Vit. X Or. 843E; Cic. Nat. Deor. 3.49; Paus. 1.26.5; Hsch. s. obwuQov ÖqlLV. Hirn. Ecl. 5.30 juxtaposes "the precinct of Poseidon" and the temple of Athena Polias. 50) For early renderings of Erechtheus see F. Brommer in , Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft (Bonn 1957) 160-161 and Vasenlisten zur gr. Helden­ sage3 262; for the same of Erichthonius, Brommer in Charites 157-158 and Vasen­ listen3 262-263; M. Schmidt, AthMitt 83 (1968) 200-212, pis. 73-76; C. Berard, Anodoi. Essai sur I'imagerie des passages chthoniens (BibI. Helv. Rom. 13, 1974) 34-38, 172, pis. 1-2 fig. 3-6. A South-Italian pelike from Policoro, of the late fifth century, shows Poseidon and on horseback, and on the other side Athena and a female companion in a chariot; C. Clairmont, GRBS 12 (1971) 491-493, pis. 4-5, identifies the companion as the daughter of Erechtheus destined for sacrifice, but this is unconvincing. The Origin of the Panathenaea 257 cordingly. It has long been recognized that the Cecropids prefi­ gure the Arrhephori, two young girls who served Athena by going at night from the Acropolis to a destination in south-east Athens, where they exchanged one burden for another, and S1 whence they retumed to the Acropolis ). These burdens and the purpose of the ritual are matter for conjecture, which since J. E. Harrison has strangely fixed on such things as snakes, phalli, S2 real or pretended infants, and fertility or initiation rites ). T0 reconstruct the festival Arrhephoria would take us too far afield and is hardly necessary, for we are interested only in the point of attachment for the Erichthonius story. It is naive to sup­ pose that the Arrhephori like the Cecropids tended an actual infant or else hanselled mysterious tokens which suggested fertility and offspring. Whatever the actual burdens, they were undoubtedly carried on the head in baskets. Lobeck suggested long ago that the girls' tide, aQQTllpoQo<; or EQQTlq\OQo<; or EQOTJIpOQO<;, comes from the stern of aQQLXo<; "wicker basket", and in the light of other -IpOQO<; compounds used in cult this proposal is far superior to any other, S3 ancient or modem ); moreover, the grammarians record a long 51) That the Arrhephori descended through the cleft in the north face of the Acropolis to a sanctuary 'on the north slope was "cautiously suggested by O. Broneer, who excavated the sanctuary and afterwards the lower reaches of the cleft, revea!ing the Mycenaean weH; later this suggestion became a dogma and the starting point of every discussion of the Arrhephori. But as Jeppesen observes, AJA 83 (1979) 386, the stairway shows no trace of use after the Mycenaean reriod. To think of the litde girls as climbing down this vertical cleft in the dead 0 night, perhaps with swaddled infants on their heads, is both terrifying and ridiculous. E. Kadletz, AJA 86 (1982) 445-446, now points to Pausanias' use of ou ltoQQw as confuting Broneer; it would have been appropriate to say that Pausanias' usage was not only noted but fuHy documented by Broneer, Hesperia 1 (1932) 51 n. 1. 52) For this line of speculation see Burkert, 94 (1966) 1-25, Homo Necans 169-173, Gr. Re!. 348-349. It has ostensible warrant in scho!. Luc. Dia!. Meretr. 2.1, pp. 275-276 Rabe, which somehow aligns and conflates the Thes­ mophoria, Scirophoria, and "Arrhetophoria" as expressing the same mythical and physical "principle"; but the ancient philosopher who stands behind the scholium and eiern. Protr. 2.17 and a sentence in Steph. Byz. s. M(AT]'tO~ - possibly Theo­ phrastus, hardly Poseidonius or ApoHodorus of Athens as Jacoby affirmed, FGrHist IIIb Supp!. 2.204 n. 77 - is so equivocal and tendentious that his testimony cannot be admitted until it is explained. In my opinion he starts from the use of underground chambers, to which he gives several names, in the three festivals: at the Thesmophoria the megara were opened to receive the slaughtered pigs, at the season of the Scira they were mucked out as a necessary and unceremonial opera­ tion, and at the Arrhephoria (as I shaH suggest in amoment) a lair of sacred snakes was entered by girls bearing food. 53) Etymology is most fuHy dealt with by F. R. Adrados, Emerita 19 (1951) 117-133, who has a new explanation for the first element of the word: it is the stern of CxQQi]v in the sense of "male" parts, i.e. pha!li! 258 Noel Robertson

series of words of similar shape and the same meaning which perhaps indicate a non-Greek culture term and help to explain the fluctuating form of the cult tide. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in a comment which draws on general observation of Greek ritual, speaks of ai xaVl']

IV. Erichthonius and the bringing o[ new [ire

After this process of elimination we are free to interpret the rest of the Erichthonius story as the aition of the Panathenaea. Euripides in some unnamed play, perhaps the Erechtheus, gave a vivid account of the birth of Erichthonius (Eratosth. Cat. 13, 2 citing Eur. fr. 925 Nauck ; Hyg. Astr. 2.13): rebuffed by Athena, Hephaestus concealed hirnself "at a place in Attica" which was The Origin of the Panathenaea 259 S4 thereafter called 'HqJaL

54) Ev 'tLVL 't6:TtWL Tii~ 'A't'tLKij~ KQu3t'tE

17 Rhein. Mus. f. Philol. 128/3-4 260 Noel Robertson loc. cit.) or the altar of Eros (schol. PI. Phaedrus 231E; Plut. loc. cit.); they belonged to the Panathenaea, the Hephaestia, and the Promethia (Harp. s. AU!J.1tll<;, citing Polemon fr. 6 Preller; and many derivative notices). Also at the entrance, and so presumably adjacent to the altar of Eros, was an "old base" with a scene in relief (Apollodorus loc. cit.); arelief that seemed "old" to a Hel­ lenistic antiquarian was probably Late Archaic, so that the base and the altar of Eros may weIl be coevaI. At any rate the base showed the two fire-gods, "Prometheus first and eIder with a staff in his right hand, Hephaestus young and in second place", and also an altar in relief that was shared by the two gods. In the light of this relief and of the rest of our evidence for the cult of Hephaestus at Athens, it is commonly and reasonably supposed that Prometheus was the original fire-god of the Academy, and 56 that Hephaestus was an afterthought ). Eros too will be a late­ 57 corner ), but why is hethere at all? The torch-racers ran from the altar of Prometheus, says Pausanias; Plato's scholiast says with equal emphasis that the torch-racers of the Panathenaea ran from the altar of Eros, and 58 that the torch-racers ran from the "image" of Eros ). These conflicting reports have been variously evaluated and re­ conciled; the true explanation follows from the points already noted. The entrance to Athena's precinct was adomed with a Late Archaic relief (as it seems) and with an altar of Eros dedicated by

56) See Wilamowitz, KI. Schr. 5.2.18-21, Glaube213""2.139-141; Nilsson, Gesch. der gr. Re!.213 1.529; Brommer, Hephaistos 159. 57) Cleidemus apud Athenaeus reports that Charmus was the first to set up an altar of Eros at the Academy, and according to Pausanias Charmus said so in his dedication, but this is belied by the transmitted couplet; P. Friedländer, Epigram­ mata (Berkeley 1948) 108, rightly says that "nQw'tOc; is an element of the tradition, not apart of the epigrarn". The tradition is doubtless correct; Jacoby, FGrHist Illb Supp!. 1.72, has no grounds for calling it "polemical". 58) Plutarch's ayuAJ.l.U is somehow mistaken (the senses "ornament" or "gift", LSJ s.v. 1-2, are early and poetic and neither could be intended by Plutarch); in all other sources, including the dedicatory epigram quoted by Cleidemus or another, it is an "altar", ßWJ.l.6C;; the note in Manfredini and Picciril­ li's recent edition of the Life of Solon (Rome 1977) is inaccurate in this respect. Either Plutarch is speaking in ignorance of the actual object that was dedicated (and this is not unlikely, since he ascribes the dedication to Peisistratus, not Charmus), or a statue was added in later days, which Plutarch rather foolishly took as the dedication. Some think of an altar and astatue as co-existing from the start, perhaps set up by Charmus and Peisistratus respectively - see e.g. F. W. Hamdorf, Griechische Kultpersonifikationen der vorhellenistischen Zeit (Mainz 1964) 8, 75 ­ but this is neither plausible in itself nor commended by the evidence. The Origin of the Panathenaea 261

Charmus. In the same period brother of Hippias built a grandiose wall round the Academy (Suda s. tO 'In:n:uexou tEL­ xLOV). A boundary stone of the Academy recently found in situ dates from the end of the sixth century (Deltion 22 [1967] Chron. 46-49). Whether "Hipparchus' wall" enclosed just the precinct of Athena or something more, the entrance to the precinct was prob­ ably marked by a monumental gateway in the wall- which might then attract the relief and the altar. In any case there was extensive construction at the Academy in the Late Archaic period. The construction must have provided for the starting point of the torch-race, which of course required a broad track. It was not feasible, we may be sure, for the race to start precisely at the old altar of Prometheus, somewhere within Athena's precinct; there­ fore a new altar, the altar of Eros, was installed at the entrance, so that the ephebes could kindIe their torches and sprint away: both Plato and Plutarch measure the race from the "kindling",

59) So Jacoby on Duris F 47. 262 Noel Robertson

predictably said that Charmus was the lover of Hippias (Cleidemus apud Athenaeus) or Peisistratus the lover of Charmus (Plutarch), and other writers dweIl on the social or the cosmic significance of the cult of Eros. The only direct evidence however 60 is the epigram inscribed on the altar, as quoted by Cleidemus ): "Eros of manifold devices, to you Charmus set up this altar at the shaded boundary of the gymnasion". This epigram does not iden­ tify Charmus as a gratified lover or as an early adept in the homosexual ways of the gymnasium. The epithet n:OLXLA.O!!T]xavo~, though ahapax, is only a variation of other epithets applied to several deities in early poetry, n:OLXLA.O!!T]'tT]~, n:oA.1J!!T]xavo~ and n:OA.U!!T]'tL~; the last is applied to Hephaestus at 11. 21.355, where his power as fire-god is to the fore. In the gymnasion or exercise ground of the Academy Athenians of the late sixth century trained for the races and other events at the Panathenaea and doubtless other festivals. So the altar of Eros does not represent a new outlook; it expresses a familiar aspect of the worship of Athena, Prometheus and Hephaestus, the aspect which is also expressed in the Erichthonius story and which, as we shall see, is associated everywhere with new fire. For the moment we need only observe that the Erichthonius story was current and rerhaps aLa mode in the later sixth century, when Bathycles 0 Magnesia depicted Hephaestus and Athena on the Amyclaean throne, and when, very probably, it was taken up in the epic Danais (more of this below). In setting up the altar of Eros at the Academy, Charmus could not conceivably have been unmindful of the eros that pro­ duced Erichthonius. Leaving the Academy, we follow Erichthonius to his nurs­ ing. The Cecropids are entrusted with the infant's basket; we saw in III above that this episode is secondary and does not affect the outcome; but we should note the setting. The Cecropids keep vigil on the Acropolis, whence the guilty sisters leap to their doom. describes their quarters on the Acropolis, not indeed with reference to Erichthonius, but in a sequel, Hermes' trysting with one of the sisters, which he likewise takes from Callimachus and knits together with the Erichthonius story (Met. 2.552-565,

60) Athenaeus seems to eite the epigram from Cleidemus, but there are doubts about the name and the sequenee; see Jaeoby on Anticleides FGrHist 140 F 6 and Cleidemus FGrHist 323 F 15. The literary souree does not matter here, sinee the epigram looks authentie in any ease - and even if it were not, the present argument in respeet of Eros would stand. The Origin of the Panathenaea 263

708-835)61). The Cecropids occupy "a secluded part of a ·build­ ing", three adjoining rooms entered by a common door with valves (lines 737-739, 814-815, 819); this can only be the west chamber of the Parthenon, divided into three parts by parallel columns - i.e. the l'taQSEVWV proper, the "maiden chamber" des­ tined here as in some other cults for maiden servitors of the dei­ ty62). But Euphorion, in a very fragmentary passage dealing with the vigil of the Cecropids, mentions a "larnp" which is almost certainly Athena's (fr. 9 Powell, 11 van Groningen, line 3)63); this lamp, in the sculptural form imparted by Callimachus, was kept in the Ionic temple that succeeded the Archaic temple (Paus. 1.26.6; cf. Str. 9.1.16, p. 396). Athena fostered Erichthonius in her temple on the Acropolis. In Apollodorus' narrative the fostering leads to the story of the Cecropids and is resumed afterwards "in the precinct" (BibI. 3 [189-190] 14.6.4-6); according to Hyginus Erichthonius in snake form fled from the opened basket to Athena's shield "and was reared by her" (Astr. 2.13). Athenian vase-painters know the fos­ tering as weIl as the presentation of the infant to Athena and the opening of the basket by the Cecropids; Athena and Erichthonius are ,hown in privacy together, the latter as a bouncing boy, on at least ;.' 'ur vases spanning the whole fifth century, of which three were vo.ive offerings found on the Acropolis (Athens, Acr. 433, ARV2 216.10, c. 500-490 B.C.; Athens, Acr. 396, ARV2 628.1, c. 450 B.C.; CA 681, c. 450 B.C.j Athens, Acr. 1193, c. 400 B.c.r). Athena faces or dandies the boy; in one scene, Acr. 396, he wears a wreath and drinks from a phiale. Athena's fostering - 61) A. Henriehs, in a paper to appear in the fortheoming volume for M. Gigante, will present a new deeipherment of a passage of Philodemus De Pietate, P. Here. 243 II, whieh puts it beyond doubt that Callimaehus like Ovid told of a Ceeropid turned to stone for obstrueting Hermes. 62) A.B.Cook, Zeus (Cambridge 1914-1940) 3.246 n., rightly noted the partieularity of Ovid's deseription, but thought that he had somehow blended the "Ereehtheium", i.e. the Ionie temple of Athena, with the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. The Ceeropids stand for the Arrhephori, and Pausanias, speaking of the Arrhephori apropos of Pandrosos (to whom, together with Atheiia, statues of Arrhephori are sometimes dedieated: IG 22 3472, 3488 as restored, 3515), says that the girls "dweil not far from the temple of the Polias" (1.27.3); this might weil be the west ehamber of the Parthenon. 63) Despite van Groningen's eomments on pp. 32, 37 of his edition of Euphorion (Amsterdam 1977), Athena's lamp is not elsewhere eonneeted with the Ceeropids. Cf. Burkert, Hermes 94 (1966) 11. 64) The vases are illustrated and diseussed by Kron, Phylenheroen 72-75, 254-255, pis. 7.1-2, 8.1-3 (E 35-37, E 40 in her eatalogue); she rejeets two other putative instanees. 264 Noel Robertson

'tQElpELV in Apollodorus, educare in Hyginus - can be evoked by the dandling and the drinking from a phiale. Nonnus however, who repeatedly refers to both the birth and the fostering of Erich­ thonius, says just as often that Athena suckled hirn at her breast, a paradox which he enjoys - she is a maiden mother with a "male breast", and so on (Dion. 13.173-177, 27.113-115, 319-323, 29.338-339, 48.956-957). Nonnus undoubtedly took the scene and the language from some Hellenistic poet. The fostering of Erichthonius was thought of no less concretely than his begetting. Nonnus insists on certain other details which must likewise come from his Hellenistic source: the nursing was done by lamp­ light in Athena's maiden-chamber, and the light was kindled by Hephaestus. The phrases in question deserve to be quoted. Athena suckles Erichthonius "in a recess of her torchlit maiden­ chamber", l'tuQoOlpaQOLo xa'tcl l't'tUXa l'taQ8EvEwVO~ (13.173), or does so in secret "by the wakeful gleaming lamp", aYQul'tvuJL .•. al:8om AUXVUlL (27.115). When Athena and Hephaestus enter the fray to­ gether, it may be that Hephaestus has "kindled the bright torch of the Cecropian lamp", KEXQOl'tLOU AUXVOLO lpEQauYEa öaAOV aVU'ljJa~ (33.124). At 27.317-323, a passage discussed in 11 above, the nurs­ ing together with the maiden-chamber, the lamp and yerhaps torches are transferred to Marathon; here are "the mystica sparks of your ever-burning lamp", i.e. Hephaestus', !J.uO'tLl'taAOU~ Ol'tLV­ 8i]Qa~ aELlpaVEO~ OEO AUXVOU (27.320), and here is the "wedding torch-light", yU!J.LOV oEAa~, of Athena as Hephaestus' bride (27.319). From these passages the following picture emerges. A chamber in atempie of Athena is illuminated by a lamr (13.173, 27.115); the lamp has been lit from torches (33.124, c . 27.319); the torches and therefore the lamp have been kindled by Hephaes­ tus (33.124,27.320, cf. 27.319). Nonnus' source was addressing readers familiar with the Ac­ ropolis and expected them to see the lamp-lit chamber with the mind's eye. Yet his indications create a dilemma. The "maiden­ chamber", l'taQ8EvEwV (13.173, 27.117, 321), points to the Doric temple and particularly to the west chamber, where Ovid and doubtless Callimachus before hirn situate the Cecropids or Ar­ 65 rhephori. Yet the sacred lamp, for such it iS ), points to the Ionic

65) It might be said that a lamp was often needed by nursing mothers (cf. Lys. 1.14) and for nocturnal rites and might therefore be found in the west chamber of the Parthenon; but this is a lamp of special sanctity, kindled by Hephaestus and also said to be "ever-burning", the leading attribute of the lamp in the tonic temple (Paus., Str. loee. ciu., Plut. Numa 9.12, Sulla 13.3). The Origin of the Panathenaea 265 temple, and agrees with Euphorion's mention of the Cecropids. The dilemma is not due to modern subtlety or modern ignorance; it was proposed to ancient readers by these repeated indications. It is very unlikely that Nonnus hirnself spliced these indications from different sources; but even if he did, we are left with con­ flicting views of the setting, as between Callimachus and Eupho­ rion. There can be no doubt that two different settings were en­ visaged, the Ionic temple and the west chamber of the Parthenon. The explanation is that the nursing was traced to two different rites, the Panathenaea and the Arrhephoria. The features of the Arrhephoria which lent themselves to this aetiology were consi­ dered in III above; it may be added here that as a nocturnal rite the Arrhephoria made use of torches, not surprisingly (HSCP Supp!. 1 [1940] 521-530 lines 32-34, Oliver's re-edition of the honours for Julia Domna, in which the officiants who "set up a torch" are convincingly restored as the Arrhephori)66). The Parthenon set­ ting goes with the Arrhephoria and can be disregarded for our purposes67). The details of Erichthonius' birth and nursing have now been fully canvassed. The story in brief is this. Hephaestus or Pro­ metheus desired Athena, and at the Academy, where these fire­ gods and also the god Desire were held in honour, the fire-god's desire was consummated in such fashion that a marvellous crea­ ture, Erichthonius, sprang from the earth; Athena then nursed hirn in her temple on the Acropolis beside the sacred lamp. It is obvious at a glance that the story is a ritual aition and that the rite is the bringing of new fire from the Academy to the Acropolis. This was done at the Panathenaea, on the night preceding the great procession and sacrifice of Hecatombaeon 28: ephebes kind­ led torches at the altar of Desire and ran a relay-race to Athens, and the victor's torch was used to light the fire for sacrifices to Athena (schol. P!. Phaedrus 231E). The myth and the rite corres­ pond exactly, and the correspondence proves again what has been argued on other grounds, that the Arrhephori and the Cecropids are interlopers. Erichthonius was enrolled, as we might expect, in the line of Athens' kings, coming between Amphictyon and Pandion; but his

66) 8UELV] öl; "at 'tue.; [uQQT]]i[ljJoQ]oue.; 'tue.; ~1tOAu[Of!Eva]e.; "at Ö~[Löa la]'täv,,'tA. 67) Before the Parthenon was built the Arrhephori may have been lodged, or may have performed some duties, in the Archaic temple of Athena; but such early practice will not be reflected in Hellenistic renderings of th'e myth. 266 Noel Robertson only act is to found the Panathenaea and to ordain or invent the festival gear. After his birth and fostering he became king "and set up the xoanon of Athena on the Acropolis and instituted the festi­ val Panathenaea", says Apollodorus (Bibi. 3 [190] 14.6.6); after his birth and fostering, primo tempore adulescentiae, "he held the games of the Panathenaea for Minerva and hirnself competed in the chariot-race", says Hyginus (Astr. 2.13); similarly other sources. This sequence presupposes that the fetching of new fire was the start of the festival, to be followed by the procession and sacrifice and then by the games. In historical times the extensive and extensible program of events at the fourth-yearly Panathenaea must have begun well before the torch-race and the sacrifice of the 28th68), but the events that preceded were doubtless the later inno­ vations. We may safely assurne that the premier event, the apo­ bates, was always staged immediately after the sacrifice. The tradition of Erichthonius' founding the Panathenaea is invariable (Harp. s. IIava8ijvma, citing Hellanicus FGrHist 323a F 2 and Androtion FGrHist 324 F 2)69), and must have been age-old. The Panathenaea are reckoned the oldest of festivals (Marm. Par. FGrHist 239 F 10) - or the second oldest, if the renown of Eleusis gives first place to the Eleusinia ([Arist.] Peplus fr. 637 Rose). As founder of the Panathenaea Erichthonius is above all the inventor of the chariot and of the apobates event. The rest of his dispensa­ tion is plainly secondary - the xoanon (ApolIod. loc. cit.), sac­ rifices and temple (Hyg. loc. cit.), kanephoroi and thallophoroi (Philochorus FGrHist 328 F 8-9), and so on. His reputation for introducing money to Athens (Plin. Hist. Nat. 7.197; Hyg. Fab. 274.4; Poll. 9.83) comes from the money prizes for some events, itself a late development. The apobates event, a favourite subject in Athenian art of the Classical period, both vase-painting and relief sculpture, is taken 70 back to the eighth century by several Geometric vases ). Erich-: 68) See e.g. Ziehen, RE 18.3 (1949) 474 s. Panathenaia 1; Mikalson, The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year (Princeton 1975) 34. 69) In view of Plut. Thes. 24.3-4 Jacoby insisted on distinguishing a riyal tradition which made Theseus founder of the Panathenaea: see Das Marmor Parium (Berlin 1904) 4s-46 and his comment on FGrHist 239 A 10 and FGrHist 334 F 4. This is a wrong emphasis. Nothing could displace Erichthonius as originator of the apobates event and hence of the Ur-Panathenaea; Theseus was merely said to have extended the festival to all the inhabitants of Attica, a step which was sometimes correlated with a change of name, from "Athenaea" to "Panathenaea". 70) For renderings of the apobates event and of Erichthonius therein, see Kron, Phylenheroen 75-76. . The Origin of the Panathenaea 267 thonius is plausibly identified in two black-figure scenes which show Athena beside her favourite (Berlin 2049, ABV 390; Copenhagen 108, ABV 435.1); in one, Berlin 2049, Erichthonius is the apobates, in the' other Athena. Other renderings of Erich­ thonius as charioteer or apobates are moot, whether in red-figure painting or .in the sculptu~e of the Parthen<;>n ~nd the Ionic templ~; but a scholIast on Ansteldes records a pamting on the AcropolIs which showed Erichthonius "behind" Athena, "driving a chariot" (Panath. 3.62 Dindorf). It is this event that gives Erich­ thonius his place among inventors, as the first charioteer (Marm. Par. FGrHist 239 A 10, etc.), and exalts hirn to the sky as the constellation Auriga (Eratosth. Cat. 13, etc.). Thus the elements of the Panathenaea that are reflected in the original myth of Erichthonius are the fetching of new fire and the apobates event. The festival once consisted solely or chiefly of these elements, together with the procession and sacrifice. It need not have been an agonistic festival to begin with, for an officiant might bring new fire, and a charioteer and his passenger might display their skill, without a competition. The torch-race is surely a later refinement, since the myth of Prometheus as originally told does not suggest a race ofany kind, least of all a relay-race of ephebes. And the'apobates event was formerly a display of martial prowess, not a race or other form of contest, if we may trust the implications of another aition, the gigantomachy or rather Athena's part in it. The scene of combat interwoven in Athena's robe showed the goddess in her chariot (Eur. Hec. 466-471, etc.), and was therefore an aition of the apobates event. It is not surpris­ ing however that from this beginning the Panathenaea became a full-fledged agonistic festival, like most of the other festivals of Athena examined in 11 above. The aitia attached tothese other festivals disclose the same original elements. We can now recognize the fetching of new fire at Rhamnus, where Nemesis' egg is warmed upon an altar; at Corinth, where an infant is consumed in a fire within Athena's temple; and possibly at Tegea, where the infant Aeropus is 71 miraculously suckled after his mother's death ). And although in

71) In the light of this result a conjecture may be offered about the ritual nomenclature at Marathon, Corinth, and Tegea (cf. 11 above). The festival is called 'EA.A.«()'tLU, "'EA.wtLu, 'AA.WtLU, and Athena bears a like epithet, sometimes thought to be the name of an earlier deity. The fire-god Hephaestus was called 'EA.UJ6~ (and his son 'EA.UJQEU~) - among the Dorians, says Hesychius, and so no 268 Noel Robenson

these festivals as in the Panathenaea we usually find a fuB agonistic program, it is an equestrian feat, not visibly performed in compet­ ition, which forms the aition at Corinth, Tegea, and Cleitor ­ Bellerophon and Athena bridling Pegasus, Athena driving her chariot in the gigantomachy, and Athena inventing the chariot. We have restricted comparison to festivals of Athena (and to one of Nemesis). But other city-protecting deities preside over other new-year's festivals, and it is worth noting that similar rites 72 in the service of other deities give rise to similar stories ). In V below we shall consider the Lemnian new-year's festival in which the means of fetching new fire so impressed the early Greeks that they spoke of Jason's arriving on the Argo and begetting a child EuvT]o~, "Fine ship". Other instances can be found at Rome and in Etruria, where the new fire was equated with the birth of a mar­ veBous ancestor, either Romulus or Servius Tullius or Caeculus founder of Praeneste or even the god Mars. By some accounts both Romulus and Servius Tullius were conceived when a male member appeared in the hearth-fire - it was the fire-god Vulcan, says Ovid (Fasti 6.627) - and impreg­ 73 nated a girl tending the hearth ). Caeculus' mother was struck by a spark from the hearth; she exposed the infant near atempIe of Jupiter, and being discovered beside a blazing fire, he was thought to be a son of Vulcan. Several scenes in Etruscan art - on a cista from Praeneste, and on two bronze mirrors from Chiusi and Bolsena - show an infant emerging from a jar to be embraced by "Minerva", armed and accoutred as the goddess of the citadel; the

doubt at Corinth. Have we not here a word for "fire"? Ir might be related to EtAT], OEAa<;, about which linguists keep an open mind (cf. Frisk and Chantraine s. vv.). If this is right, Athena's epithet 'HqJaLo"tLa (IG 22 223 B 4; Hsch. s. 'HqJaLmLa) is analogous to 'EAAW"tL<;. 72) At Eleusis ~T]l!oqJ6wv, "Light of the land", was nursed in the palace by Demeter in disguise, and part of her ministration was to thrust hirn in the hearth­ fire at night; N.]. Richardson on Horn. H. Cer. 231-55 compares Demophon with Erichthonius, and on 265-7 compares the yeady honours for Demophon with the sacrifices for Erechtheus as described in the (The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Oxford 1974). Ir is just conceivable that the ßanT]"tu<;, a form of mock combat, belonged to a new-year's festival and that Demophon's nursing is partly inspired by rites of new fire; but on the whoie the signs point elsewhere. 73) U. W. Scholz, Studien zum altitalischen und altrömischen Marskult und Marsmythos (Heidelberg 1970) 127-132, 141-157, gives the literary evidence for these stories and illustrations of the Etruscan seenes and a survey of modern 0finion - in which rites of new fire have no place. For further comment, apropos o A. Alföldi's interpretation of the stories, see H. S. Versnel, BibO 33 (1976) 400-401. The Origin of the Panathenaea 269 caption by the infant is "Mars" or a compound name with "Mars" as the first element; on the cista flames appear to rise from the jar beneath the armed infant. The significance of the "hearth­ phallus" and even more of the Etruscan scenes is disputed; yet the fetehing of new fire, such as we hear of at Rome on March 1, appears to rrovide a simple and satisfactory explanation. On the first day 0 the year, as March 1 once was, the hearth-fire of Vesta's temple was rekindled (Ov. Fasti 3.143-144; Macrob. 1.12.6; Solin. 1.35); as at Athens the fire was brought to the temple from some other quarter, perhaps the area Volcani; for in cases of accidental extinction, says Festus, fire was produced by rubbing wood and "a Virgin carried it in a bronze sieve to the temple" (p. 92 Lindsay). Mars was worshipped on the same day (Lyd. De Mens. 3.22, 4.42), the first of the month named after hirn, and it is no surprise that the god or his offspring should be identified with the infant conceived in the fire. The role of Miner­ va in the Etruscan scenes, and also the term "Palladium" attached 74 by some to the secret objects in the temple of Vesta ), suggest that the Etruscans and the Romans saw the similarity between the Greek rites of new fire and their own.

V. H ephaestus and the sixth-century reform

In the aition of the Panathenaea Hephaestus plays a leading part which expresses the belief that he rather than Prometheus begets the new fire at the Academy. As remarked in I above, the belief is unexpected in so far as Hephaestus comes late to Athenian worship from a background of Ionian bawdry. Yet the belief must signify something real. Hephaestus' advent at the Academy and the story of Erichthonius' paternity go back to the sixth century and so roughly coincide with the elaboration of the Panathenaic festivals under the tyrants or just before, at the time when Athens first grew strong and prosperous. Hephaestus as a figure of wor­ ship and the story as a theme of literature and art are both very much to the fore throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, during the whole period in which the Panathenaea embody Athens' pride and aspirations as a great power. We must therefore ask what Hephaestus meant to the Athenians.

74) See G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Röme~ (Munich 1912) IS9 n.S. 270 Noel Robertson

It is not so hard to see why Hephaestus, once arrived at the Academy and associated with Athena, should become a favourite. At Colonus-by-the- the god of fire and forge presides over the industrial quarter of the city, induding the foundries and smithies which have been uncovered at the foot of the hilI; every­ one agrees that the great temple and the statues by Alcamenes and the festival Hephaestia with a torch-race and other contests reflect the importance of Athens' craftsmen in the time of Perides and 75 during the Archidamian War ). The temple is a dose congener of three others in outlying parts of Attica - of Poseidon at Sunium, of Ares at (as it seems), and of Nemesis at Rhamnus; all four are strategically placed and the deities in question - together with Demeter at Eleusis, whose shrine was likewise embellished ­ are emblematic of Athenian resources or achievements; they show the same tendency to allegorical "personification" as do contem­ porary and sculpture and vase-painting. Before the Peric­ lean building program the cult of Hephaestus and Athena at Colo­ nus was very modest, having left hardly any traces. In the days of , says Plato, the Athenians were under the special tutelage of Athena and Hephaestus, and on the "Acropolis", which then extended to the north as far as the Eridanus, the warrior dass "dwelt round the shrine of Athena and Hephaestus" (Crit. 109C, 112A-B). This fanciful picture presupposes that the cult on Colo­ nus antedates the mid fifth century and no doubt the Persian Wars; but it need not be much older. In the late sixth century Colonus lay at the north-western edge of the city, where the Panathenaic procession was marshalled (Thuc. 1.20.2, 6.57.1-3); very likely the cult began in connexion with the Panathenaea. In the temple of Erechtheus on the Acropolis Pausanias re­ cords an altar of Hephaestus, as weIl as others of Poseidon and Erechtheus together and of Butes (1.26.5); a marble throne in­ scribed "of the priest of Hephaestus" (IG 22 4982) was found on the Acropolis, as was another inscribed "of the priest of Butes"

75) For the furnishings of the cult at Colonus see H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora 14 (1972) 140-149; E. B. Harrison, AJA 81 (1977) 137-178,265-287,411-426; Brommer, Hephaistos 45-46, 75-90. The most plausible suppletion of [Arist.] Ath. 54.7 names the Amphiaraea, not the Hephaes­ tia, as the fourth-yearly festival introduced in 330/29 B.C., and the Hephaestia, not the Heracleia, as a fourth-yearly festival of long standinp' which can then be connected with the arrangements of 421/20 B.C. (IG 12 84, 1 82); cf. D. M. Lewis apud J. K. Davies, JHS 87 (1967) 35 n. 36, and Wilhelm as cited in n. 19 above. The Origin of the Panathenaea 271

2 6 (IG 2 5166/ ). The lettering of the thrones is of the fourth or third century B.C., and to be noticed by Pausanias the altar was doubtless a venerable object; in any case it will go with one of the Acropolis festivals in which Hephaestus was honoured beside Athena, namely the Panathenaea and the Chalceia. One might therefore expect to find Hephaestus' altar closer to one or other of Athena's temples. The Chalceia however provided an occasion for associating Hephaestus and Erechtheus. Although this festival was officially addressed to Athena alone (IG 22 674 lines 16-17, etc.), the craftsmen who celebrated the festival caused Hephaestus to be included and even to be exalted over Athena (Phanodemus FGrHist 325 F 18, etc.). The emblem of their handicraft that was solemnly carried in procession was an agricultural implement, the 2 liknon or winnowing fan (Soph. fr. 760 Nauck , 844 Pearson/ Radt; cf. Athens, Acr. 618, ARy2 553.31, a liknon carried as an offering by a male processioner)77). The liknon was used in the labours of Scirophorion which are personified by Erechtheus, the hero of the Scira, as we saw in I (and also III) above. It figured in the procession of the Chalceia as a masterpiece of handicraft (be­ ing woven of osiers to a difficult shape) that was essential to the livelihood of the whole community; here then is the moment· when Hephaestus the craftsman and Erechtheus the "Thresher" deserve to be honoured side by side. The cults at Colonus-by-the-Agora and on the Acropolis are plainly a consequence of the celebrity which Hephaestus first ac­ quired at the Academy. The tyranny of Hippias, c. 527-510 B.C., saw rather extensive construction at the Academy - the costly circuit wall, perhaps a monumental gateway to the precinct of Athena, at any rate the altar of Eros beside the entrance, and the relief scene of Hephaestus and Prometheus (IY above). The last two works show that Hephaestus was already on hand; so does the torch-race that was accommodated by the altar of Eros and signalized by the relief; for torch-races were distinctive of

76) Brommer, Hephaistos pI. 40.3, gives a photograph of the thrones, which are now placed together near the "Erechtheium"; just where they were first seen is in doubt, and will signify little for their place of origin; cf. Jeppesen, AJA 83 (1979) 388-389, and also Brommer, Hephaistos 109. Perhaps an expert could date the lettering more closely; the thrones were wrongly separated by Kirchner as IG 22 4982 and 5166, the first described as a "base", and dated "s. IV/lII a." and "e. 350-300" respectively. 77) C.Berard, AK 19 (1976) 101-114, pIs. 26-27, adduces the vase-painting and explains the significance of the liknon in the Chalceia. 272 Noel Robertson

Hephaestus (Hdt. 8.98.2), but not of Prometheus, if the myth of the pyrphoros is any guide. The story of Hephaestus' begetting Erichthonius was current in the same period. It is expressly cited from the Danais (Harp. s. alrt6x8ovE~, cf. IG 14.1292 fr. 11; Kinkel, EGF pp. 4, 78), an epic poem about the flight of the Danaids from Egypt (eIern. Strom. 4.224; Kinkel, EGF p. 78); though nothing is known of the date or authorship of this poem, it cannot well be later than the sixth century78). Another notice indicates that the Erichthonius story was known at Sparta at about the time that the Academy was being refurbished. In one of the scenes which Bathycles of Magnesia worked in relief on the throne of Amyclaean Apollo "Athena flees as Hephaestus pursues" (Paus. 3.18.13). Present opinion places Bathycles and his throne towards the end of the sixth century79); and since the medley of mythical scenes includes several of Attic origin - Theseus fighting the Minotaur and also leading hirn cap­ tive, Cephalus abducted by Day and Helen by Peirithous and Theseus - we need not doubt that the pursuit was thought of as leading to the birth of Erichthonius80). To be sure, from a broader point of view the pursuit is another wrinkle in the burlesque history which begins with the binding of and continues as Hephaestus is cajoled by Dionysus and led back upon a donkey and married to Aphrodite and cuckolded by Ares. These episodes were relished at Sparta as everywhere else8!); Bathycles also showed the binding of Hera and the performance of Demodocus

78) In IG 14.1292, the tabula Borgiana, the Erichthonius story is recounted (fr. 11 lines 1-4) just before a list of epic titles including the Danais or rather Da­ naides (fr. 11 line 10), presumably works which treated the points aforementioned. A. F. Garvie, ' Supplices (Cambridge 1969) 178, records several conjec­ tures, all very tenuous, about the authorship of the Danais; if it originates in Cyrene (Wilamowitz) or dates from the seventh century (M. C. Astour), the men­ tion of Erichthonius will be harder to explain. 79) So e.g. G. Lippold, Die griechische Plastik (Munich 1950) 55-56. The dating depends on excavated foundation blocks which are ascribed to the throne and bear graffiti; see Jeffery, LSAG p. 200 no. 32. 80) Wilamowitz supposed that in the original version Hephaestus' pursuit and discomfiture were related for their own sake, without a sequel, the birth of Erichthonius being a "Iate and feeble variation", a "nasty invention"; see KI. Schr. 2 3 5.2.10-11, 18, 28; Glaube / 2.140. 81) Hephaestus' return to Olympus is depicted on a Laconian vase of c. 560 B.C. ( 10.711); see C. M. Stibbe, Lakonische Vasenmaler (Amsterdam 1972) 1.279 no. 190, and Brommer, Hephaistos 203, pI. 11;1. The Origin of the Panathenaea 273

(Paus. 3.18.11, 16), and Gitiadas showed Hera's release (Paus. 3.17.3). But though the pre-existing story told how Hephaestus was offered a beautiful wife as areward, and though it was natural to say that he accordingly fixed on Athena (as he does in Hyg. Fab. 166, at the instigation of Poseidon), the pursuit requires not only a motivation but even more a denouement - which can only be the birth of Erichthonius. The denouement, and therefore the ritual at the Academy, comes first. Possibly Athena's baffled lover was in the first instance Prometheus, not Hephaestus (IV above). But even if Hephaestus is the original and Prometheus the substi­ tute, it is reasonable to suppose that the pursuit was inspired by the rites of new fire. For the main elements of the burlesque history grow out of ritual; Hephaestus' literary reputation spreads with his real-life worship. Both the burlesque history and the cult background were reconstructed almost 90 years ago by Wilamowitz, who showed that the treatment of Hephaestus in Greek literature and art, from the lay of Demodocus in 8 down to the end of the fifth century, drew largely on a lost Homeric Hymn; and that Hephaestus was worshipped in early days not only on Lemnos but also on the Greek islands of , Lesbos, and perhaps 82 ChioS ). Wilamowitz further saw that the episodes of the Hymn answer to the practices of cult: Hephaestus the homely outcast is conjoined with Hera the disdainful mother and with Dionysus the agreeable companion because Hera and Dionysus are the principal deities of Hephaestus' island milieu - Hera of Lesbos and Samos, Dionysus of Lesbos and Naxos (cf. schol. Theocr. 7.149, schol. 11. 23.92), other stories about Hephaestus and Dionysus on Naxos). It is also suggested that Hera was bound to her throne on Olym-

82) See Wilamowitz, K!. Sehr. 5.2.5-35, Glaube2/3 1.314-315, 2.140--141. B.Snell, Gesammelte Schriften (Göttingen 1966) 102-104, shows that the deriva­ tive hymn of Alcaeus (fr. 349 Lobel-Page, cf. fr. 381) was probably addressed to Dionysus, not Hephaestus; but he need not have doubted the worship of Hephaes­ tus on Lesbos, although the only direct evidence is the personal names •A<:pm(TtL~, 'H<:pmc:n;Lwv (IG 12.2.535; SEG 27.486; both from Eresus); the month-names of IG 12 Supp!. 29, including 'H<:paLc:n;LO~, belong not to Lesbos but to Dardanus on the mainland. The Homeric original has now been recognized by R. Merkelbach, ZPE 12 (1973) 212-215, in a hexameter poem in which Hera complains of her fetters and Ares (?) and Dionysus offer help (Pap. Oxy. 670, PoweH, Col!. Alex. pp. 80--81,245); it might be a hymn to either Hephaestus or Dionysus, but hardly an epic digression, as Sneil suggested. The pictorial renderings are fuHy presented by Brommer, Hephaistos. 274 Noel Robertson pus because her statue was bound with wiIlow-branches at the 83 Samian festival Toneia ); but the correspondence is rather slight and imperfect and the suggestion is therefore dubious. At all events the story was elaborated as the Greeks came to worship Hephaestus beside the older deities of Olympus. When Athena enters the story, she too is a reflection of cult - and it can only be the cult at Athens, since the virginal armed goddess is of little account on the eastern Aegean islands. Thus we see that both the Danais and Bathydes' relief scene presuppose the worship of Hephaestus at the Academy. Bathydes supplies a terminus ante quem near the end of the sixth century; yet Hephaestus will have arrived at Athens more than a day or two before the Erichthonius story reached an Ionian artist work­ ing at Spafta and an epic poet working at Argos or in some more distant quarter; a terminus round the mid century seems perfectly safe. This brings us rather dose to 566 B.C., the weIl attested date for the institution of athletic contests at the Panathenaea, and to 84 the earliest Panathenaic amphoras ). Hephaestus may weIl have to do with the reform of the Panathenaea. Our question then becomes, what did Hephaestus mean to the Athenians towards the mid sixth century, when he first arrived among them? Hephaestus was not a Greek god; the Greeks of the eastern Aegean adopted hirn from their non-Greek neighbours, and he 85 always kept his alien associations ). Lemnos is his first and

83) So WiJamowitz, KI. Sehr. 5.2.23-25; cf. K. MeuJi, Gesammelte Schrif­ ten (Basel 1975) 2.1059-1064 (a sketch of unpublished material). Since the cult statue was a standing figure - cf. R. Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos und verwand­ te Kultstatuen aus Anatolien und Syrien (Leyden 1973) 211-213, pI. 85a - an observer would hardly think of Hera bound to her throne. The Samian festival, be it noted, was called TOVELa, not *Tovmu (IvPriene 57 line 6, with Wilamowitz' observation ibid. p. 310). Apart from the binding of Hera, Hephaestus' ties with Samos are strengthened by new evidence, both early theophorous names and the torch-races at the Heraea for Hephaestus and Aphrodite, a Lemnian pair who are not otherwise found together in Greek cult. G. Dunst, ZPE 1 (1967) 226--227, and Brommer, Hephaistos 166, cite the evidence but rather inconsequently doubt the ties. 84) See Davison, From Arch. to Pindar 3s-43, 54-61, 64-69. 85) In his essay of 1895 Wilamowitz chose a different emphasis, comparing Hephaestus with the dwarfish smiths and enchanters of Greek belief, and describ­ ing hirn as a north-Aegean counterpart of the south-Aegean . But at 2 3 Glaube / 1.314 n. 1 he insisted upon a foreign origin, and this is now the common opinion; see Nilsson, Gesch. der gr. Rel. 213 1.528-529; B. Hemberg, Die Kabiren (Uppsala 1950) 164-166,265; Burkert, Gr. Rel. 260; Brommer, Hephaistos 1-3. For Malten's view of the place of origin see n. 90 below. The Origin of the Panathenaea 275 favourite abode in literature (11. 1.593, Od. 8.283-284; [Hes.] fr. 148 Merkelbach-West); its chief city is Hephaestia, and a leading citizen is priest of Hephaestus (IG 12.8.27, one of the Philostrati) and another is agonothetes of the festival Hephaesteia (SEG 28.718). Though Lemnos is occupied by Sintians in Homer, it is Pelasgian thereafter, and Hephaestus is closely linked with the Pelasgian cult of the Cabeiri (Str. 10.3.21, C473, citing Acusilaus FGrHist 2 F 20 and Pherecydes FGrHist 3 F 48), of which Lemnos was the centre in early days, before the advancement of Samo­ (PMG fr. adesp. 985; Aesch. Cabiri)86). All this is well known, but it is not sufficiently appreciated that Hephaestus is also at horne on the coast of the mainland opposite Lemnos, be­ side and the mouth of the Hellespont. The Trojans whom Diomedes encounters first are two sons of Dares priest of Hephaestus, and the god rescues one of them (11. 5.9-10, 23-24); if Hephaestus does not figure elsewhere as apartisan of Troy, it is perhaps because the fire-god is needed for another purpose in 11. 87 21 ). The Homeric priest is supported by the month-name 'Hepa(J'tLo~ occurring in an inscription of Roman date which prob­ abl~ derives from the town Dardanus near 11ium (IG 12 Supp1. 29) 8); the festival 'Hepa(ona here implied and the 'Hepa(o'tELa of Lemnos (SEG 28.718) are almost the only festivals of Hephaestus 89 that we hear of, outside of Athens ). Troy is further aligned with the Pelasgian cults of Hephaestus and the Cabeiri by the myth of Dardanus, the eponymous ancestor who comes from during a great flood (Lycophron, Alex. 72-85, etc.); in Homer this eponym begets Erichthonius, the very first embodiment of the fabulous wealth of Troy (11. 20.219, 230). The mythical and ritual affinities of Lemnos and the Troad are not unexpected in the light of the Bronze-Age culture of Poliochni, Thermi, and Troy I-V.

86) See Preller-Robert, Gr. Mrth. I' 857-858; Hemberg, Kabiren 160-170. 87) So Wilamowitz, Glaube 2/ 1.314. 88) For the provenanee of IG 12 Supp!. 29 see L. Robert, Monnaies antiques en Troade (GenevalParis 1966) 31-32; REG 86 (1973) 72. 89) The festival name might be restored at IG 4.1 2 66line 34, an Epidaurian deeree of 74 B.C.; but this will be a late development, like other traees of Hephaes­ tus in the vieinity, for whieh see Wilamowitz, K!. Sehr. 5.2.19, L.Malten, RE 8.1 (1912) 313-314 s. Hephaistos, and Brommer, Hephaistos 160, 164,251. At Olym­ pus in Lyeia Hephaestus was honoured with a festival as the prineipal deity of the eity (TAM 2.905 XIII D, XIV F, XIX A, s. II p.).

18 Rhein. Mus. f. Philnl. 128/3-4 276 Noel Robertson

Lemnos and the Troad were Hephaestus' homeland90), and his worship continued here long after he was taken up on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Naxos and Samos. By the·mid sixth century Hephaestus was a familiar figure in Greek poetry and art; and Athenians who went abroad, Peisistratus among them, will have known the cult of Hephaestus among Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. It is likely nonetheless that the Athenians like other Greeks found the fire-god most impressive in his homeland. Moreover, in the course of the sixth century Athenians thrust themselves upon this homeland, first at Sigeum, then elsewhere along the Hellespontine coast, and finally upon Lemnos itself. The chronology of this advance is obscure and disputed, but need not detain us here. Long before they proceeded to invasion and con­ quest, Athenians must have been interested and busy in these regions. Even if Lemnos was not occupied until the beginning of the fifth century91), the island and its people and customs and resources were undoubtedly well known at Athens for many years before. And the pattern of worship on Lemnos probably obtained in the area of Sigeum as well. At any rate, it is Lemnos that will show us why Hephaestus appealed to the Athenians. At the new-year's festival of Lemnos new fire was brought by ship from , andwas taken ashore after the island had been purified, and was then distributed to households and shops as "the beginning of new life" (Philostr. Her. 53.5-7, p. 67 Lannoy = 207-208 Kayser)92). The festival is described from first-hand knowledge by a native of Lemnos, one of the Philostrati; and since it commemorates "the deed once wrought against the men by the

90) That Hephaestus belongs rather to Caria and Lycia, and that Lemnos is a way-station, was argued by Malten, JdI 27 (1912) 232-264, and RE 8.1 (1912) 342-347 s. Hephaistos; this view is endorsed by Hemberg and mooted by Nilsson (n. 85 above) and taken as gospel by many others (cf. Brommer, Hephaistos 1-2). It will not do. The evidence adduced by Malten, abundant though it is for the time of the Empire, only shows that Hephaestus was then the interpretatio Graeca of a native deity, conformably with a process which takes place throughout Minor at this period. A native deity of Caria and Lycia would hardly be familiar to the early Greeks (Nilsson thought of the Mycenaeans), nor would he leave the trail which we find in Greek literature. 91) For this dating see A.J. Graham, Colony and Mother City in (Manchester 1964) 175 n. 3. H. Berve, Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen (Munich 1967) 1.83, 2.568, prefers the years 510-506. 92) "New-year's festival" seems the proper term, even though Philostratus' mss. do not agree on the phrase marking the periodicity of the rite. KOe' EKom;ov Etor; is defended by L. de Lannoy, AntCl42 (1973) 52&-531, and is printed in his text of 1977. The Origin of the Panathenaea 277 women of Lemnos at the instance of Aphrodite" - i.e. the rite gives rise to the myth, which is already known to Homer (11. 7.467-469,21.41,23.746-747) - the festival goes back long before the Athenian occupation of Lemnos, and we may supplement 93 Philostratus' description with details deducible from the myth ). The ship of the plainly stands for the ship bearing new fire, and the mating of the Argonauts and the Lemnian women stands for the renewal of life through the new fire; the theme of sexual congress is the same as in the Erichthonius story. The Lemnian festival resembles the Panathenaea in outline. Although the fire is brought to Lemnos by ship, it is carried to its destination in the city (whether Hephaestia or Myrina) by a runner; for At­ eaA.(öT]~, "Son of smoke", a herald remarkable for his swiftness, is sent at nightfall from the ship to Hypsipyle to announce the arri­ val of the Argonauts and to obtain permission for them to stay (Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.641-651). Athletic contests follow, in which the prize is a robe, E(Je~~, qJäQo~, nEnA.O~ (Pind. 01. 4.19-27, Pyth. 4.253; Sim. fr. 547 Page; Call. fr. 688 Pfeiffer; cf. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.30--32, 3.1204-1206, 4.423-434). Apollonius omits the games and represents the robes as parting gifts for Polydeuces and Jason, and some spoke of funeral games for Thoas (schol. Pind. 01. 4.32c, citing Call.) - for every agonistic festival was traced to a funeral; but there is no doubt that the same occasion is in view throughout. Jason's robe is described as dark-hued, x'UavEO~, nOQ­ qJUQEO~ (Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1205, 4.424), and perfumed (ibid. 4.430-434). The new fire points to Herhaestus, but it is wrong to sup­ ~ose that the new-year's festiva was mainly ~oncerned wit~ the 94 fire-god ). To be sure, we now know of a festival Hephaesteia on Lemnos, which was moreover agonistic, like the new-year's festi­ val (SEG 28.718, from Myrina, c. 200 A.D.). But we should expect Hephaestus to have his own festival, at whatever season, and games are nothing out of the ordinary; the Hephaestia at

93) The congruence of the ritual and the myth is emphasized by Burkert, CQ2 20 (1970) 1-16; Homo Necans 212-218. 94) So Burkert, CQ2 20 (1970) 3, reproving Nilsson's agnostic approach at Gr. Feste 470-471. The coins of Hephaestia bearing emblems of Hephaestus prove only that Hephaestus was worshipped there, as is obvious from the city-name; not that "the festival belongs to Hephaestia" or that it honours Hephaestus. The festival Hephaesteia mentioned in a decree of Myrina may have been celebrated at either Myrina or Hephaestia or at both, but is not to be identified in any case with the new-year's festival, as we shall see. 278 Noel Robertson

Athens were agonistic (IG 13 82 [= 12 84]; IG 22 1138 line 11, 3201 lines 7-11; [Xen.] Ath. 3.4; And. 1 Myst. 132)95), and it may weil be that this Athenian festival was modelled on the Hephaesteia of Lemnos, or else on the Hephaestia of the area of Sigeum, or on both together. The gods who presided at the new-year's festival are not in doubt. In most accounts of the murderous Lemnian women Aph­ rodite's anger is to the fore, and so it is in Philostratus' formula­ tion of the festival aition, as quoted above; a detail added by Asclepiades, that the Lemnian men failed to render the accus­ tomed sacrifices to Aphrodite (FGrHist 12 F 14), is surely drawn from the actual rites; at a certain stage the women sacrificed to Aphrodite, whereas the men did not. In the festivities which greeted the arrival of the ship and of the new fire, Hephaestus and Aphrodite were honoured together, to judge from Apollonius' account (Argon. 1.849-860); for the Argonauts and the women fill the city with dancing and song and sacrifice and feasting, at which "above the rest of the immortals they entreated Hera's glorious son and Cypris herself"; "Cypris" has already caused the women to desire the Argonauts "for the sake of wise Hephaes­ tus", so that Lemnos may be reropulated. From these indications it follows that the chief deity 0 the festival was a goddess whom the Greeks equated with Aphrodite. Atempie of Aphrodite happens to be attested for Lemnos (schol. Stat. Theb. 5.59), but an excavated find is more revealing: a dedication to "Thracian Aphrodite", 'A]cpQOÖLLEL 8Qu[LxLm, came to light at the Cabeirium, which lay on a headland just north 6 of Hephaestia (ASAtene 3/4 [1941/43] 91 no. 12t ). The goddess associated with the Cabeiri is elsewhere called either Cabeiro (Str. 10.3.21, C473, citing Acusilaus FGrHist 2 F 20 and Pherecydes FGrHist 3 F 48) or, as an eponym, "Lemnos" (PMG fr. adesp. 985; cf. Steph. Byz. s. Aijl-lvo~); another name of "Lemnos" was

95) The contests at the Athenian festival are discussed by Davies, JHS 87 (1967) 35-36; but he was wrong to argue against the existence of musical contests, which are attested not only by the transmitted text of [Xen.] Ath. 3.4 and by the prima Jacie interpretation of IG 22 1138 lines 4-11, but also by "the basic docu­ ment" concerning the Hephaestia, IG 13 82, line 14 (= 12 84 I. 16): 'tlE~ ~l.OOLK~~ xa6aJ'tE~ [.... 96) For the evidence bearing on "the Great Goddess" of Lemnos see Hem­ berg, Kabiren 165, and Burkert, CQ2 20 (1970) 3 n. 5, 4 n. 2. She is probably represented in pre-Greek terracottas and on coins of Roman date. Malten, RE 8.1 (1912) 354-355 s. Hephaistos, insists on dissociating Hephaestus and the Great Goddess to suit his own preconceptions of both. The Origin of the Panathenaea 279

"the Great Goddess" (Steph. Byz.), and she in turn was identified with the Thracian Bendis (Ar. Al}IlVLaL fr. 368 Kock; cf. fr. 365), a notice which agrees with the epithet of Aphrodite in the dedica­ tion, and suggests that Homer's Sintians added something to the features of this Pelasgian goddess. At any rate "Lemnos" pro­ duced Cabeirus from the earth (so the lyric passage as transcribed by Hippolytus), or else Cabeiro and Hephaestus begot the Cabeiri or Camillus father of the Cabeiri (Pherecydes and Acusilaus re­ spectively). Here then is the goddess of the new-year's festival; here too is the original cult association of Hephaestus and "Aph­ rodite", which in Greek poetry became another conjugal disaster on Olympus. Other deities too had a part in the festival. During the purifi­ cation of the island, says Philostratus, while the ship and the new fire were still at sea, the Lemnians invoked "secret gods of the nether earth", 8EO'u~ ... X8ov(ou~ xai anoQQl}'tOu~. This description fits the Cabeiri, who are "secret" and "of the nether earth" in virtue of their mysteries and their genealogy respectively. Thus the new-year's festivalof Lemnos was addressed first of all to the Great Goddess, alias Aphrodite or "Lemnos" or Cabeiro or even Bendis, but also to her consort Hephaestus and to their offspring the Cabeiri. One other aspect of the Lemnian festival requires comment here. The new fire, says Philostratus, was brought by ship from Delos: 8EWQi~ ÖE vaü~ EX ill}AOU nUQcpoQEi. This is often discounted as a later innovation, 'reflecting Athenian interests and the celebri­ ty of the Delphic and Delian Apollo; the Athenian Pythais, after all, was a sacred delegation which brought fire from Delphi to Athens, and the source of new fire in Philostratus' rite might be an ever-burning hearth in the Pythium on Delos; in early days, it is suggested, the Lemnians resorted to the mysterious flame on their 97 own Mount Mosychlus ). Such speculations are gratuitous and even perverse. Apollo could hardly assurne a leading role in an ancient festival of Lemnos; fire fetched from another point on the island would not satisfy the intent of the drastic purification de-

97) The Pythium on Delos used large supplies of fire-wood and so presum­ ably contained an ever-burning hearth; that Philostratus looks to this Pythium, of which the latest epigraphic mention is of the mid second century B,C, was suggested by R, Vallois, and is approved by P. Bruneau, Recherehes sur les cultes de Delos a l'epoque hellenistique et a l'epoque imperiale (Paris 1970) 115, 121. Burkert, CQ2 20 (1970) 4-6, thinks of Mosychlus as the source and interprets Soph. Phi!. 800-801 as an evocation of new fire. 280 Noel Robertson scribed by Philostratus; nothing we hear of the reputed volcano on Mosychlus suggests a source of new fire. Above all, the story of the Argonauts proves that the renewal of life which the festival enacts always came by ship from overseas; the son of Jason and Hypsipyle already known to Homer is Eüvl']oC;, "Fine ship" ­ another name for the 8EWQLC; va'Üc;. Since the festival has much to do with Cabeiro and the Cabeiri, it is natural to identify the Delian source as the local cult of the Cabeiri, to which once looked for inspiration, as we learn from Iamblichus, who brackets Delos with and Samothrace as also with Eleusis and other ancient seats of mystic lore (Vit. Pyth. 28.151). Although this cult is expressly mentioned only once in Delian inscriptions, under the form "the Cabeirium looking towards Cynthus", seemingly distinguished from a second Cabeirium (IG 11.2.144 A 90, of c. 304 B.C.), the building in question appears to be one with the later "Samo­ thrakeion" or "sanctuary of the Great Gods", and has been recog­ 98 nized on the ground in remains dating from c. 400 B.C. ). A prominent feature of the excavated Cabeirium, standing in the courtyard in front of the temple, is a circular construction of marble which has been interpreted as a hearth-altar or eschara ­ and which might weIl serve as a source of new fire. Moreover, the cult included torch-races for the three age-classes of boys, ephebes, and men, for victories in these events are recorded on a column in the sanctuary (IDelos 6.2597, of 126/5 B.C.). Conceiv­ ably the Cabeirium on Delos was installed by the Athenians in the fifth or fourth century, at a time when they possessed both Lem­ nos and 'elos; but if so, the native Lemnians of an earlier day will have drawn on some other overseas source. On this score the festival aition permits no doubt or cavil; and the new dispensation which Dardanus brings to Troy from overseas is evidently a par­ allel aition. We may suspect that Dardanus' brother lasion is the original saviour of temnos, who came to be identified with a Thessalian hero bearing the same transparent name. But however the myth developed, and whatever the external relations of Lem­ nos in early days,it is certain that their custom was always to fetch new fire from some other island. With these details in mind we come back to our question. What did Hephaestus mean to the Athenians in the mid sixth century? What forms of ritual did Hephaestus bring with hirn

98) See Bruneau, Recherehes 379-399. The Origin of the Panathenaea 281 from the Pelasgian domain? When the Athenians came to Lem­ nos, and perhaps when they came to Sigeum, they encountered a rite of new fire that was like their own but far more picturesque and far more celebrated in the Greek world. On Lemnos the rite had long been attached to the story which all men knew, the voyage of Argo (Od. 12.70); the Homeric fire-god was at horne both on Lemnos and in the Troad. The ritual business was impres­ sive in itself. A sacred ship, prefigured by the Argo, br0tlght the new fire from overseas, arid put in to shore only after the whole island was purified. A runner brought the fire to the city, doubt­ less to the altar of the Great Goddess; for the Lemnian principal is 'YtjJLJtUAl), "High-gate", a name evoking a monumental shrine. Then came the procession to the shrine, prefigured by the Ar­ gonauts advancing from the port to the town; then hymns, sac­ rifice, and feasting; finally games, with fine robes as prizes. This exotic festival nonetheless resembled the Panathenaea, at least in outline. The early Panathenaea, as reconstructed in IV above, consisted in the fetching of new fire from the Academy to light the altar of Athena, in a procession and sacrifice, and in a display or a contest of charioteers. In the sixth century this festival was greatly elaborated, and Hephaestus was part of the elabora­ tion. The Athenians borrowed Hephaestus from Lemnos or there­ abouts; but assuredly they did not borrow the name alone. The other features of the Panathenaea which are most striking and most nearly unique, and which are often mooted as innovations, are the torch-race (in later times a common event), and, at the fourth-yearly celebration, the offering of the huge robe and its conveyance on the ship-wagon. It is reasonable to suppose that all these features were inspired by the example of the Lemnian new year's festival.

VI. The ritual innovations: torch-race, peplos, ship-wagon

99 1) Consider first the torch-race ). Prometheus preceded Hephaestus at the Academy, and his myth does not suggest that he raced or even ran; he "stole" the fire in astalk of fennel (Hes.

99) For torch-races in general see J.Jüthner, RE 12.1 (1924) 569-577 s. l..a~aÖT]ÖQoIlLa, and Die athletischen Leibesübungen der Griechen 2.1 (SBWien 249.2,1968) q.4-156; Dunst, ZPE 1 (1967) 231-239; L. Koenen, Eine agonistische Inschrift aus Agypten und frühptolemäische Königsfeste (Meisenheim am Glan 1977) 10-12; for pictorial renderings, P. E. Corbett, Hesperia 18' (1949) 346-351, 282 Noel Robertson

Theog. 566-567, Op. 51-52), a furtive act, not a headlong defiant gesture; it is only in the fifth century that he acquires a torch instead of a fennel stalk and becomes the prototype of Athens' racers (Eur. Phoen. 1121-1122; cf. Crinagoras, A.P. 6.100.2, a dedication at Athens; Hyg. Astr. 2.15). The epithet :n:uQcp6Qo~ which applies to Prometheus as worshipped at the Academy (Oed. Col. 55) is drawn from ritual; the :n:uQcp6QOt of other cults, as of Asclepius at Athens and , were not racers but officiants who brought fire from a hearth to an altar as a measured and stately proceeding - like other ritual proceedings which give rise to -CPOQO~ compounds, and like the fire-bringing which issues in the name OQWVE"~, the Argive counterpart of Prometheus (Paus. 2.19.5)100). Such a stately fire-bringing is at­ tested for the , a festival conducted on a more modest scale than the civic celebrations that featured torch-races; lighted torches were brought from a hearth to an altar by proces­ sioners "wearing the finest robes" and singing hymns (Ister FGrHist 334 F 2a)101). The Late Archaic relief at the entrance to the pis. 78-79, and Metzger as cited in n. 104 below; for the Panathenaic torch-race, Breiich, Paides e parth. 326-337. I take it that all torch-races in the ancient world, on foot and on horseback, made use of relay teams, and that such teams are an unspoken assumption of Paus. 1.30.2, who mentions only single runners at the dose of the race. Dunst, after showing that the epigraphic record uniformly refers to relay teams, should not have returned to an interpretation of Pausanias which is now all the more isolated and unnecessary. . 100) The role of the ltuQlpOQOC; (or ltlJQOlpoQOC;) is illustrated from inscrip­ tions by L. Robert, REG 79 (1966) 746-748. That Prometheus' epithet and conduct derive from ritual was observed long ago by E. Schwartz, Gesammelte Schriften 2 (Berlin 1956) 55-56. West on Hes. Op. 567, following Pohlenz, doubts the ritual background; but the cult at the Academy is then left unexplained. Hesiod probably knew of Prometheus not from Athens but from Boeotia, since the name was given to one of the Cabeiri at Thebes (Paus. 9.25.6); Prometheus the Cabeirus was father of "Aetnaeus" and therefore concerned with fire, whether or not this was the secret gift imparted by Demeter. 101) About the fire-bringing of the Apaturia a conjecture may be worth­ while. The aition associates the rite with the occasion when the use of fire was first communicated to men at large (Ister F 2a-b). On this showing the fire was brought from some common source to a number of outlying points - from the hearth of Athens' Prytaneum, surely, to the altars of all the J::hratries of Attica. No doubt one might also think of a hearth inside the lodge, mxoc;, of a given phratry (Vit. Horn. Herod. 31, pp. 211-212 Allen; Suda s. "OIlT]QOC;, p. 262 Allen); but to fetch fire from this indoor hearth to an altar standing just outside (Iike the altar of Zeus Phratrius in the regulations of the Deceleans, SIG3 921) would not account for the aition. It was natural to replenish the civic hearth-fire just before it was drawn upon by the phratries; perhaps then this was the business of the festival Promethia, which induded a torch-race over the course from the Academy, and which fell in The Origin of the Panathenaea 283

Academy, as described by Apollodorus, showed 6 I-tEV IIQol-tl']8Ev\; JtQ

Pyanopsion or thereabouts, if the list of festivals at [Xen.] Ath. 3.4 (Dionysia, , Panathenaea, Promethia, Hephaestia) and at IG 22 1138 lines 9-11 (Dionysia, Thargelia, Promethia, Hephaestia) is in chronological order; the Hephaestia probably came at the end of Pyanopsion or in Maemacterion (see n. 103 below). A rite of replenishing the civic hearth-fire for general use would give a very plausible explanation of the myth of Prometheus the fire-bringer. It should also be noted that in some versions it was Prometheus who clove Zeus' head to produce Athena (Eur. Ion 455-457; ApolIod. BibI. 1 [20] 3.6; schol. Il. 1.195; schol. Pind. 01. 7.66a-b), and that this myth is likely, for reasons which cannot be gone into here, to be the aition of the phratry cults of Zeus and Athena. It is of course no surprise, and no objection to this accounting, that in Ister's time the officiants of the Attic Apaturia invoked the fire-god Hephaestus. 102) The statue, representing a boy with a brace of cocks, is mentioned only by Aelian, and is said to mark the spot on the Acropolis from which the pair threw themselves; the altar is mentioned only by Pausanias, and presumably marks the 284 Noel Robertson

.This race-course, running along the Academy road and the Panathenaic Way between the complementary altars of Eros and Anteros, was very likely the only course that was ever used for torch-races at Athens (excepting the mounted torch-race of the Bendideia). The three premier torch-races were those of the Panathenaea, the Promethia, and the Hephaestia (Harp. s. AUIl:n:Ui;, citing Polemon fr. 6 Preller; etc.). For the Promethia as for the Panathenaea the primary source of fire must have been the altar of Prometheus, from which the flame was transferred to the nearby altar of Eros for the starting of the race; the ultimate destination may have been the hearth of the Prytaneum, not far from the altar of Anteros. The torch-race at the Hepnaestia appears to be model­ Ied on those of the Panathenaea and the Promethia (IG 13 82, lines 30-36 [= 12 84, 1. 32-38]); at any rate Hephaestus too was con­ cerned with the source of fire at the Academy, and his altar at Colonus, the ultimate destination of the fire (cf. ibid. line 36), was again not so far from the altar of Anteros. One might perhaps suppose that the torch-races of the Panathenaea and the Promethia were coeval, if the theme of "desire" expressed in the altars of Eros and Anteros was as appropriate to the Promethia as it was to the Panathenaea. But since the Erichthonius story is so distinctive, it is more natural to infer that the torch-race of the Panathenaea was the very first. As a civic new-year's festival the Panathenaea were the most important occasion for fetching new fire, but other occasions came later in the year: The Promethia are plausibly regarded as the civic rite which provided a common source of fire for the phratry celebrations of the Apaturia, and the Hephaestia as a festival of craftsmen, and especially of smiths, which provided I03 fire for the busy winter season ). The torch-race was suited to these occasions too.

spot on the ground below where they perished. Some, e.g. W.Judeich, Topo­ graphie von Athen2 (Munich 1932) 284, place the altar as weil as the statue on the Acropolis. 103) For the Promethia see no. 101 above. The Hephaestia have often been assigned to Pyanopsion or even to Pyanopsion 28 (so Wilhelm's suppletion of IG 13 82 r= 12 84], line 8), but only on the supposition that this festival was ancillary to either the Apaturia or the Chalceia; see e.g. Mommsen, Feste 339-349; E. Reisch, OJh 1 (1898) 60; Malten, RE 8.1 (1912) 362 s. Hephaistos; P. Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertüme~ (Munich 1920) 234 n. 5, 251. Yet the Hephaes­ tia are an important agonistic festival belonging to the important cult of Hephaes­ tus at Colonus-by-the-Agora, and no such connexion with other cults and festivals can be entertained. It is likely nonetheless that the Hephaestia fell in late autumn, in late Pyanopsion or in Maemacterion, as the last agonistic festival of the season; for The Origin of the Panathenaea 285

Other torch-races were run at the Theseia, the Epitaphia, and 104 the festival of ). The last does not antedate 490 (Hdt. 6.105.3), and the others will be later still. There is no reason why any of them would require a different race-course or a different source of new fire. The rites of the Epitaphia were conducted at the polyandrion graves near the Academy ([Arist.] Ath. 58.1; Heliod. Aeth. 1.17.5; etc.), and the games too were held on this stretch of road. The cave of Pan was dose to the altar of Anteros, and the Theseum was not so far away. So the Panathenaic race­ course could be conveniently used at these festivals, and perhaps it was mainly the convenience that caused the torch-race to be added to the program. In Athens then the first torch-race was that of the Panathenaea, and can be traced back to the period c. 527-510 B.C. Outside of Athens and Attica torch-races are mainly known from Hellenistic or Imperial inscriptions, or inferred from coins which are no earlier (save those of Amphipolis, from the early fourth century). The fetching of new fire at the Hellotia of Corinth was doubtless age-old (cf. II above), but here as in Athens, and as at at [Xen.] Ath. 3.4 and at IG 22 1138 lines 9-11 it comes last in the chronological series (as it seems) of choregic events. Moreover, one would suppose that a festival of craftsmen, like festivals signalizing other activities, was associated with a certain . time of year; and although the comparative material is confined to the Chalceia at Athens and to the month-name MaxavEu<; or MaxavELO<; occurring at a few Dorian cities, all indications point to late autumn or early winter. MaxavELO<; is attested at Chalcedon (SIGJ 1009 line 22, 1011 lines 7-8) and at (cf. Samuel, Gr. and Rom. Chron. 88, citing the Liber Glossarum as interpreted by Mountford and Hanell; but "Machanios" implies MaxavELo<;, not MaxavEu<;), MaxavE1J<; at Corcyra (IG 9.1.694Iine 48) and at Issa (SIG J 141 line 1); a festival MaxavELa in honour of Zeus or Athena or both is presupposed, and both festival and month-name will go back to the mother-cities of Megara and Corinth, where handicrafts flourished. At Byzantium the month is equivalent to December, at Corcyra it comes at about this time of year, and probably at Chalcedon too; cf. Bischoff, RE 10.2 (1919) 1592-1594 s. Kalender. Smiths were constantly at work in the winter (Hes. Op. 493-495), when it was less disagreeable to tend the forge, and when there was leisure to repair or manufacture farm implements, weapons, and the like. So the smiths will have obtained new fire for the winter at the torch­ race of the Hephaestia. 104) Cf. Deubner, Att. Feste index s. Fackellauf; Jüthner, Leibesüb. 2.1.136. The torch-race of the Anthesteria is shown to be illusory by H. Metzger, Recherches sur l'imagerie athenienne (Paris 1965) 74-75. That of the Aianteia was run on Salamis, as we see from ephebic inscriptions. A torch-race is attested for an Attic festival Hermaea by a single dedication (IG 22 2980, init. s. 11 a.); this is probably the Hermaea of Salamis (IG 22 1227 line 7, of 131 B.C. - archon Epicles as dated by Meritt). 286 Noel Robertson

the Nemesia of Rhamnus, the torch-race will be secondary. Much the earliest evidence comes from , where a torch-race for Parthenope was instituted by the Athenian commander Diotimus (PA 4386) shortly before the Peloponnesian War (Lyc. Alex. 732-735; schol. ad loc., citing Timaeus FGrHist 566 F 98). This is a patent transposition of the Athenian custom, and many of the later torch-races throughout the Greek world will be inspired by the famous examples at Athens. It would be wrong however to imagine that it all began with the Panathenaea. Herodotus compares the Persian royal post to the tQrch-race which Greeks "perform for Hephaestus" (8.98.2). In this brief comparison Herodotus would not specify Hephaestus as the deity honoured by the torch-race unless the name were the surest means of bringing the race into the minds of his readers; it is not that he thought of Hephaestus as a mere metonymy for fire. Athens is not exclusively or even chiefly in view; for although the torch-race of the Hephaestia probably antedates both the decree of 421/0 and the close of Herodotus' working life (whenever that was), Athens in his day also staged torch-races at the Panathenaea, the Pro­ methia, and the festival of Pan, the last singled out by Herodotus elsewhere; and possibly at other festivals. As already said, the evidence outside of Athens is mostly late, and at first glance it neither confirms nor belies Herodotus' statement. Various gods, heroes and potentates were honoured by torch-races; Hephaestus only at Methone/Mothone in Messenia (Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner, Num. Comm. on Paus. pI. P no. 9; Head, Hist. Num.2 433; Brommer, Hephaistos pI. 35 no. 1; coins of Roman date showing Hephaestus, naked, running with a torch), on Samos (Michel, Recueil 901, ZPE 1 [1967] 230, lines 4-5; victors in the torch-race for Hephaestus at the festival Heraea), and at Hephaes­ tia on Lemnos (Head, Hist. Num.2 263; Brommer, Hephaistos pI. 35 nos. 15-16; coins of Roman date showing a torch on the re­ verse). Yet the Lemnian instance is suggestive, and the Samian dou­ bly so, because the worship of Hephaestus here was early and probably gave rise to his mythical association with Hera, and because the victory list cited above contains a further detail which points to Lemnos: a second torch-race at the Heraea honoured Aphrodite (lines 7-8), Hephaestus' consort in myth and at the new-year's festival on Lemnos, but nowhere else, so far as the record shows up to now. An inventory of the Samian Heraeum refers to atempie of Aphrodite (AthMitt 68 [1953/56] 46-50 line The Origin of the Panathenaea 287

33); this is identified with an excavated temple of some magnifi­ cence on the south side of the sanctuary, which was built in the third quarter of the sixth century; since the excavated temple is divided into two equal naves with se~arate entrances, Hephaestus was likely worshipped here as welP 5). Furthermore, because of the ties already noticed between Hephaestus and the Cabeiri, and between Lemnos and the Cabeirium on Delos, we should not forget the torch-races at this Delian sanctuary. So although the evidence is fragmentary and scattered, Lem­ 106 nos is the common ground ). Hephaestus comes from Lemnos, and the earliest torch-race that we know of, at the Panathenaea, is hound up with the advent of Hephaestus at the Academy; accord­ ing to Herodotus, the Greeks at large - by which he doubtless means the Greeks of the eastern Aegean - conduct the torch-race for Hephaestus; the torch-races attested later at the Samian Heraea honour both Hephaestus and Aphrodite and so disclose a Lemnian origin more plainly still; torch-races were run at the Cabeirium on Delos, the source of new fire at the Lemnian new-year's festival; in Roman times there is the torch-race for Hephaestus on Lemnos itself. We should also note that the on the opposite mainland, who are linked with Lemnian worship by Homer and hy Aphrodite's epithet at the Cabeirium, gave the Greeks the other form of torch-race, in which the relay teams were mounted (PI. Resp. 1, 328A; etc.). Finally, in the aition of the Lemnian new-year's festival At8a),,(öTj<;, "Son of smoke", runs from the port to the city to announce the arrival of the Argo, i.e. of the ship hearing the new fire. There are signs that Aethalides once had a far more important role in the story than appears from later ver­ 107 sions ); he has various associations, but both his father Hermes

105) So Dunst, ZPE 1 (1967) 228-229. Brommer, Hephaistos 166, is in­ clined to disa~ree, for the very reason that Aphrodite and Hephaestus are not otherwise conJoined in cult. J.-P. Michaud, BCH 94 (1970) 973, 976, reports that at in an excavated sanctuary of Aphrodite is thought to have been shared by Hephaestus because the votive objects include bronze tongs and an axe; but Aphrodite alone may preside over metal-working. 106) It might be mentioned as supporting evidence, which points to Lem­ nos and Athens together, that the great majority of known torch-races belong to the Aegean islands and the northern and eastern coasts of the Aegean. See Jüthner's list at RE 12.1 (1924) 570-571 s. AOIlJtOÖTjÖQOJ.lLO. 107) See C.Robert, Die griechische Heldensage (Berlin 1920-26) 778-779, 851. Aethalides is the earliest and most constant of Pythagoras' prior incarnations; for the evidence see Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cam­ bridge, Mass. 1972) 138. It was surely Aethalides' Cabeirus-like transitions bet­ ween the upper and the lower worlds which made hirn a useful persona for the 288 Noel Robertson

and his gift of sojourning now in the lower world and now in the upper suit the Lemnian cult of the Cabeiri. Aethalides is perhaps the only mythical figure who can be interpreted as a torch-racer. On this showing the Greek torch-race originates on Lemnos. 2) The peplos displayed on the ship-wagon at the fourth­ yearly celebration was famous for its splendour108), but the offer­ ing of a garment is in itself much less original and striking than the torch-race, and the antecedents are therefore harder to trace. Yet there is some reason to think that the peplos too was inspired by the Lemnian new-year's festival, in which fine robes were awarded as prizes. At any rate $ome modern misunderstandings can be dispelled straightway. It is disputed whether the offering was age-old or an innovation of the sixth centuryl09). But there is no room for dispute. The Athenians themselves did not take the peplos back to the mythical beginnings; Erichthonius, credited with the first temple, the first statue, the first bearing of boughs and baskets, the first chariot, even the first money prizes, is never said to have offered the firstjeplos. Instead the manufacture of the very first peplos was ascribe to Acesas and Helicon, master weav­ ers of Patara and Carystus (Zen. 1.56; cf. Diogenian. 2.7; Dioge­ nian. epit. 1.26; Apost. 1.99; Paroemiogr. Gr. 1.22, 197,2.5,265 Leutsch-Schneidewin). These weavers left other works, it was said - a robe presented by the Rhodians to Alexander (Plut. Alex.

Greek sage, and which explains why Pythagoras was held to be Ha Tyrrhenian from one of the islands which the Athenians occupied after expelling the Tyrrhe­ nians" (Aristoxenus fr. lla Wehrli; etc.) and to have derived his knowledge from the Cabeiric cults of Imbros, Samothrace and Delos (Iambl. Vit. Pyth. 28.151). A. Henrichs, Die Phoinikika des Lollianos (Bonn 1972) 66, thinks of Aethalides apropos of the ritual practice of blackening the face with soot, but this practice does not agree very weil with Aethalides' role as a swift herald. 108) It is perfectly clear that in the Classical period the peplos was oHered only at the fourth-yearly celebration, and since the late sources who say otherwise are untrustworthy in themselves and do not hint at any change, they can be dismissed out of hand. Ziehen, RE 18.3 (1949) 460, 486-487, s. Panathenaia 1, gives the fullest treatment; T. L. Shear, Kallias of Sphettos (Princeton 1978) 36 n. 89, again reviews the contradictory evidence. 109) Dümmler, RE 2.2 (1896) 1966, s. Athena; Deubner, Au. Feste 29-30; and Davison, From Arch. to Pindar 33-34, think of an innovation; Mommsen, Feste 112-114; Breiich, Paides e parth. 321-322; and Burkert, Homo Necans 175 n. 92, of an older custom that may have been somehow transformed. Mikalson, AJP 97 (1976) 148-151, regards the oHering of a garment as an ancient rite which links the Panathenaea and the Hyacinthia; his thesis appears to require that the garment should be oHered originally to Erechtheus and Hyacinthus, not to Athena and Apollo, but he stops short of saying so. The Origin of the Panathenaea 289

32.11), and something or other at Delphi, accompanied by an epigram which identified the maker, Helicon, as son of Acesas and as a native of Cyprian Salamis (Hieron. Rhod. fr. 48 Wehrli). 110 Whatever the value of these conflicting traditions ), the weavers in question can hardly be earlier (or later) than the sixth century. Moreover, the interwoven scene which always remained tradi­ tional, Athena's role in the Gigantomachy, appears to originate in the sixth century, being a favourite of black-figure painting, and forming the pedimental decoration of the Peisistratid temple of Athena'fll ). The sense of the offering has also been missed. The peplos of the ship-wagon was not used for dressing astatue of Athena, whether the Polias or the P~rthenos, or for hanging as a curtain in the "Erechtheion", or for any other end. The Polias was indeed dressed in some garment,'-most likely a peplos, which was re­ moved once a year for laundering at the Plynteria; but the regular laundering of the garment makes a regular replacement unneces­ sary, even at a four-year interval; the garment would be replaced at need, or when the worshippers feIt an impulse, like the Trojans in 11. 6. Our peplos was in any case far too bigfor the Polias, being displayed on tne ship's mast like a sail, and being woven, at least in the Late , by more than 100 ergastinai - who may indeed have taken turns, but not in weaving a peplos of normal size. Surely it was offered to Athena as a gift without any uIterior destination, to be laid up in her temple like other offer­ ings, like the treasures of the Parthenon which were inventoried year by year. The peplos was ·an artide of practical use, as were many other offerings in every cuIt; but the worshippers did not expect to see the deity make use of these artides before their very eyes. It follows that the Panathenaic peplos has 00 dose aoalogy with the chiton which women of Sparta wove yearly for Apollo at

110) As ·Wehrli says, Hieronymus meant to impugn other traditions by quoting the Delphic epigram; but the truth of the matter is beyond conjecture. 111) See Beazley, ABV index 2 s. "Athena, in chariot, wheeling round, in Gigantomachy", and "Athena and ", and "Gigamomachy". The association of peplos and Gigantomachy was so dose and familiar that the Meropis, a late Archaic epic dealing with Cos, spoke of Athena's flaying a giant to make a figura­ tive peplos (Pap. Co!. 5604 III 80 = Mer. Fr. 6); see L. Koenen and R. Merkelbach in Collectanea Papyrologica. Texts pub!. in honor of H. C. Youtie (Bonn 1976) 14-15,17, and Henrichs, ZPE 27 (1977) 74--75. Nonnus' mention of Attic women weaving the rape of Oreithyia (Dion. 39.188-189) does not justify Mommsen's inference, at Feste 111 n. 5, that this toO was a traditional scene in the peplos. 290 Noel Robertson

Amyclae, nor yet with the peplos which women of Elis wove every fourth year for Hera at Olympia - if in fact this chiton and l12 this peplos were used for dressing the cult statues ). If they were not, then these garments like the peplos were offerings of the season, aparchai, representative of the worshipper's resources. The great peplos was woven of wool (Ar. Av. 827; IG 22 1034; etc.). Sheep-rearing and wool-working were not so important at Athens as at some other places - at Pellene and on Lemnos, for example, where the woollen garments which figured in the local festivals, not indeed as offerings but as prizes, were renowned for their quality113). Wool was astapie product of Lemnos; witness the ram on the coins of Hephaestia (Head, Hist. Num.2 262-263), witne"ss above all the epitaph of Nicomachus, an Athenian resi­ dent on Lemnos who died at Athens in the early fourth century and who was remembered chief?, as "a man who loved his flocks", avöQu CPLAO:TtQOßa-cov (IG 2 7180, Peek, Grab-Epigramme 490). W001 among other things drew the Athenians to Lemnos, first to trade and then to conquer. Now when Hephaestus assaults Athena in the mythical projection of the Panathenaea, she wipes away the spilth with wool, EQLOV, and throws it on the ground, x8wv; whence the name of the marvellous creature who springs up, 'EQLX8oVLO~. Was this bizarre etymology, which is invariable 114 in ancient sources ), suggested solely by the name? Perhaps. But the weaving of the great peplos was introduced sometime in the sixth century, and if it came from Lemnos with Hephaestus, it would be natural for the Erichthonius story to take account of it. 3) We come to the ship-wagon, the means both of displaying the peplos in the procession and of conveying it as far as the

112) "The custom of dressing images in real clothes" is illustrated at length by Frazer, Paus. Descr. of Gr. 2.574-576, 3.592-593. Yet unless we rely on the instances at Amyclae and at Olympia, both supplied by Pausanias (3.16.2, 5.16.2), we do not find that the clothes so worn were punctually replaced at festivals, at least in Greece. Conversely there are undoubted instances of clothes laid up in temple stores. 113) For the chlainai of Pellene see Ernst Meyer, RE 19.1 (1937) 365-366 s. Pellene 1, and Gow and Page, Hellenistic Epigrams 2.495. 114) The act of EQ(WL Ctnol!u!;m is taken back to Callimachus' Hecale by schol. 11. 2.547 (quoted by Pfeiffer on fr. 260 line 19); but "dew of Hephaestus" as a reading of the papyrus traces is disowned by Lloyd-Jones and Rea, HSCP 72 (1967) 128, 136. Callimachus is thought to have drawn on Amelesagoras FGrHist 330 F 1, and it is likely in any case that the story stood in one or more of the Attic chroniclers. The Origin of the Panathenaea 291

1l5 Eleusiniurn ). It is only frorn the fourth century onward that we hear of the ship-wagon and its mast and of the peplos suspended as a sail; yet we rnay safely assurne that it goes back to the sixth century - like the Dionysiac ship-wagon, which is never rnen­ I16 tioned in any literary or docurnentary source ). In later days the ship-wagon seerningly started its journey at the rnarshalling place beside the (cf. Hirn. Or. 3.12), but in the sixth century it rnay have corne frorn sornewhat further off, even frorn the Acaderny, for whereas part of the procession was then rnarshalled at the Leocoreurn (Thuc. 1.20.2, 6.57.3), a point corresponding to the Dipylon when the city spread further out, another part was rnarshalled "outside in the district called Cerarneicus" (id. 6.57.1), which extended to the Acaderny. However this rnay be, the ship-wagon of the Panathenaea is unparalleied in other festivals of Athena and indeed in any sort of ritual - except for the ship-wagon of Dionysus, which is weIl attested in and is inferred for Athens by analogy and on the strength of three black-figure skyphoi of the period 500-480 B.C., all depicting Dionysus seated bet'ween two flute-playing in a wagon fitted out like a ship (Bologna 130; Ath. Acrop. 1281; Brit. Mus. B 79; Pickard-Carnbridge, Drarn. Fest.2 figs. 11-13). We are therefore told that the Panathenaic ship-wagon is

115) Philostratus brings the ship-wagon from the Cerameicus to the Eleusinium (Vit. Soph. 2.1.7); when the peplos was taken down from the mast, the ship-wagon was of course removed from the scene, in this case (the celebration staged by Herodes Atticus) along a further route past the Pelasgicum and up to the Pythium, "where it is now moored". The Pythium in south-east Athens was a large precinct suited to display; perhaps it superseded the site near the where Pausanias saw the ship (1.29.1). The hypothesis of a Pythium on the north slope of the Acropolis has been sufficiently refuted by R. E. Wycherley, AJA 67 (1963) 75-79, and by Ernst Meyer, RE 24 (1963) 554-558 s. Pythion 2; it is advanced again by K. Clinton, AJP 94 (1973) 282-288, but with no further war­ rant. An epigram of the early fifth century after Christ, IG 22 3818, praises Plutarch, perhays the Neoplatonist philosorher, for thrice bringing the sacred ship to the temple 0 Athena at great expense; i this means that he dragged the ship up to the Acropolis, the custom, and possibly the form of the ship, had changed. 116) For this assumption see Ziehen, RE 18.3 (1949) 461-463 s. Panathenaia 1, as against Mommsen, Feste 112-116, who held that down to c. 400 B.C. the presentation of the new peplos was a serarate rite performed by Athena's servitors on the Acropolis at a certain interva before the Panathenaea proper; that the presentation next became a public ceremony in order to exhibit interwoven por­ traits of public figures; and that the ship was borrowed from Isis and in the time of Alexander's successors. We should not expect the ship-wagon or even the mast alone to appear in the marshalling of the procession on the , for Classical sculptors had an aversion to rendering mechanical devices.

19 Rhein. Mus. f. Philol. 128/3--4 292 Noel Robertson modelled on Dionysus' ship-wagon. Since this view was put forth by Dümmler in 1896, it has been very widely adopted and never, I think, contradicted - a rare consensus in studies of the 117 Panathenaea ). Yet it seems most improbable. In the actual con­ struction of the Panathenaic ship-wagon (which doubtless grew more elaborate with the passing centuries), we may readily be­ lieve that Athens borrowed at first from the Dionysiac ship­ wagon of the lonians, practiced as they were. But it was not the ritual of Dionysus that prompted the Athenians to add a seeming ship to the Panathenaea; for the ships of Dionysus and Athena have entirely different purpos~s and associations. The Dionysiac ship or ship-wagon exhibits the god's advent in the s~ring, when he returns from overseas to the coastal cities of lonia 18). At Smyrna, as we know from Imperialliterature and coins, a wagon in the form of a trireme served to transport astatue of the god at the spring Dionysia; elsewhere, as at Magnesia-on­ the-Maeander, processioners carried a model ship on their shoul­ ders. Since the Athenian evidence is of the slightest, it can be doubted whether the ship-wagon belongs to the Anthesteria or to 119 the Dionysia, or indeed whether it was ever adopted at all ). On 117) See Dümmler, RE 2. 2 (1896) 1966 s. Athena; E. Pfuhl, De Athenien­ sium pompis sacris (Berlin 1900) 10-11; A. Frickenhaus, ]dI 27 (1912) 73; Deubner, Au. Feste 33-34; Ziehen, RE 18.3 (1949) 462; Parke, Fest. 39. It should perhaps be mentioned that the 45 pages which M. Detienne has devoted to "Ie navire d' Athena" contain no mention of the Panathenaic ship or indeed of any ship of Athena: RHR 178 (1970) 133-177, repeated under different headings in Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (Sussex 1978; French ed. 1974) 177-179, 183-184,215--258. 118) For the Dionysiac ship and ship-wagon see Burkert, Technikgeschich­ te 34 (1967) 295--296, Homo Necans 223-224, Gr. Re!. 257-258; for the Iortian katagogia A. Henrichs, ZPE 4 (1969) 237-238; for pictorial renderings of Dionysus on shipboard M. I. Davies in Athens Comes of Age: From Solon to Salamis (Princeton 1978) 72-95. In his first contribution Burkert treats the ship and ship­ wagon as relics of a time when gods came by ship or sied because the wheel had not yet been invented; this seems unnecessary and even at odds with the narural feeling which Burkert illustrates from Advent hymns. 119) At Athens the ship-wagon is usually assigned to the Anthesteria, as by Deubner, Au. Feste 102-111; Nilsson, Gesch. der gr. Re!.21J 1.583; Parke, Fest. 109. Frickenhaus, ]dI 27 (1912) 61--69, argued for the Dionysia, as now Burkert, Homo Neca.ns 223 n. 26, 263 n. 31, Gr. Re!. 166, 254, and, much less cogently, K. Kerenyi, Dionysos (Princeton 1976) 160-175; yet these scholars seem to me to have missed the significance of the eisagoge. Pickard-Cambridge, Dram. Fest.2 (ed. Gould and Lewis) 12 n. 2, sug~ests that the black-figure painters "are repre­ senting a popular subject, without dlrect dependence on any festival or ritual"; but a ship-wagon as distinct from a ship would not be a popular subject unless sug­ gested by ritual, and the ritual does not appear anywhere else in the Greek home­ land. The Origin of the Panathenaea 293 the likeliest reconstruction it was used in the late sixth and early fifth centuries at the Dionysia, in order to bring the statue of Dionysus from the Academy to the temple at the south foot of the Acropolis - the rite of eisagoge which corresponds to the Ionian katagogia, a term attested at , Priene and . The same term occurs once at Athens, in the regulations of the lobac­ chi from the time of Herodes Atticus, and appears to be linked with the celebration of the Dionysia (IG 22 1368 = LSCG 51, lines 113-115, 117-121). Before the eisagoge Dionysus was summoned to his worshippers at the Academy by the singing of dithyrambs, the hymn traditionally sung for this purpose; the rest of the festi­ val program, including all the choregic events except the men's dithyramb, took place in Athens after the eisagoge (Dem. 21.10, citing "Euegorus' law"). The god hirnself was visible in the festi­ val conveyance, as he is in the vase-paintings, in the form of a seated wooden statue (Paus. 1.38.8; Philostr. Vit. Soph. 2.1.3); the seated posture is deduced from the chryselephantine statue of Alcamenes, a later version of the cult statue. Thus at Athens as in Ionia the Dionysiac ship-wagon is the means by which the god enters the city in triumph after a winter's absence. The consequences for the Panathenaic ship-wagon are obvi­ ous. No one supposed that Athena was now arriving in the city I20 after a sojourn abroad ); a ship evoking this idea would be point­ less or worse. And of course the statue of Athena Polias, unlike the statue of Dionysus Eleuthereus, never left its temple and was I21 never put aboard the ship-wagon ). The respective ship-wagons

120) Fehde, Kult. Keuschheit 181, asserts that "the goddess came on a ship across the sea", and vainly cites some modern studies of Dionysiac and other sea- born epiphanies. ' 121) On the strength of IG 22 2245line 299, "charioteer of " as the tide of an ephebic officer, and of IG 22 3198, Herennius Dexippus as agonothetes of the Great Panathenaea who restored both the mast of the Panathenaic ship and the statue of Athena, it has been held that Dexippus caused the new or refurbished statue to be transported to the Acroyolis in the ship-wagon; see Kirchner on 2245 and on SIG) 894. The "charioteer 0 Pallas", however, drove not the Panathenaic ship-wagon but the chariot in which the Palladium was conveyed to Phalerum; cf. Burkert, ZRGG 22 (1.970) 358 n. 8. Moreover, on the true computation of the Panathenaic era, as expounded by Moretti, Iscr. Ag. Gr. 202-203, IG 22 2245 falls in 254/5 A.D., not 262/3, and so it is much less likely that this is the year of DexiIJpus' agonothesia, for which (among other things) he was honoured in c. 269 (IG 22 3669). Nor, let it be said in passing, was the statue of Athena Polias removed from the Acropolis for a ritual bath; see e.g. Ziehen, RE 21.1 (1951) 1060-1065 S. IlAlJvnlQLu; Herington, Ath. Parth. and Ath. Pol. 30 n. 2; Burkert, ZRGG 22 (1970) 358-359. 294 Noel Robenson were probably quite different in appearance; at any rate the tall mast which carried the peplos has no counterpart in the vase­ paintings of the Dionysiac ship-wagon122). It may still be said that two ship-wagons used concurrently in two public festivals could not fail to be associated in the minds of the Athenians; and this is reasonable. Yet it is certain that from an Athenian point of view the Panathenaic ship supplied the pattern; it had been instituted first, and the route from the Academy to the Acropolis was prop­ er to the worship of Athena. Taken by itself, the question of priority cannot be settled with assurance; that the Panathenaic ship-wagon goes back to c. 566 B.C., and the Dionysiac ship-wagon to the tiranny of Peisis­ tratus, c. 546-527, is merely plausible conjecture1 3). But there can be little doubt that the route and the termini, which are virtually the same for both, were dictated by the worship of Athena; for unlike Athena Dionysus has no very ancient ties with either the Academy or the Acropolis. In Ionia the ship-wagon was surely conducted in procession from the port to the upper city; although direct evidence is lacking, the weight of probability is not, and there are such indications as the Dionysiac welcome accorded Antony at the moment of his arrival in Ephesus, d~ yoüv "ElpEOOV dOL6vto~ Ull'tOÜ (Plut. Ant. 24.4). Why then did Dionysus come by ship not from Phalerum, but from the Academy? To be sure, the cult of Dionysus Eleuthereus was imported from Eleutherae, a border town at the north-west with Boeotian traditions; yet this was only because the date chosen for the new festival, the second quarter of Elaphebolion, was later than any Attic festival of Dionysus, but conformed with the colder climate of Boeotia, witness the month Agrionius = Elaphebolion; it is naive to sup-

122) According to Deubner, Au. Feste 33-34, 105-106, the so-called stylis or "standard" of the Dionysiac ship-wagon gave the inspiration for hanging the peplos on a T-shaped mast and spar; but K. Friis Johansen, Eine Dithyrambos­ Aufführung (Arkaeol.-kunsthist. Medd. Dan. Vid. Selsk. 4.2, 1959) 16--23, and A. Rumpf, BonnJbb 161 (1961) 212, have shown that the Dionysiac item is a may­ pole that has nothing to do with the ship-wagon. This is a fatal blow to Deubner's exposition, and if the vase-paintings can be relied on, one might conjecture rather that the Athenian version of the Dionysiac ship-wagon was left without a mast so as to avoid any resemblance to the Panathenaic ship-wagon. 123) For the evidence associating Peisistratus with the city Dionysia or with Dionysus Eleuthereus see Berve, Tyrannis 1.60-61, 2.552, and especially F. Kolb, JdI 92 (1977) 124-133. I do not know the evidence or the argument which enables Burkert, Homo Necans 224, to speak of "the Dionysiac reform round 560" as the occasion when the city Dionysia were founded. The Origin of the Panathenaea 295 pose that the procession from the. Ac~demy to the Acropolis somehow commemorates the mIgratiOn of the cult from Eleutherae. The eisagoge of the Dionysia is modelled on the pro­ cession of the Panathenaea, not the reverse. With the Dionysiac ship removed we see the Panathenaic ship much more dearly. Its function is not to bring the goddess to her worshippers, but to bring a new-year's gift to the goddess. In this it resembles the theoris naus of the Lemnian new-year's festi­ val, a ship so famous that it was equated with the Argo. The Lemnian ship brought new fire to the Great Goddess, the fire being transmitted at the last by torch-racers. Fire-bringing was equally the business of the Athenian new-year's festival, but here the fire was fetched from dose at hand, so that ship and torch-race could not be used successively. We have already seen that the torch-race was borrowed from Lemnos; the ship was not omitted, but was turned to a related purpose, the conveyance of the peplos as another emblem of renewal. In sum, the ancient ritual of the Panathenaea was greatly amplified and embroidered in the sixth century. Hephaestus came to Athens and jostled Prometheus at the altar in the Academy and in the story of Erichthonius; a torch-race took the place of a more state!) fire-bringing; the peplos and the ship-wagon gave a start­ ling new appearance to the procession; the precinct at the Academy was embellished, the road to the Acropolis was widen­ ed, and altars of Desire were installed at either end. These last improvements belong to the period c. 527-510 and are a conse­ quence of the changes in the program. The changes can hardly be later than the mid century, iri view of the currency of the Erich­ thonius story; so they may hang together with the enlargement of the agonistic program in 566 B.C. The model for these changes was the new-year's festival of Lemnos, already widely known in the Greek world, though possibly the Athenians had doser ex­ I24 perience of similar rites in the area of Sigeum ).

Ontario/Canada N oel Robertson

124) We need not look for any eorrelation with politieal vieissitudes at Athens. Publie festivities were not transformed by manifesto, and Peisistratus and his sons had no economie or seetarian poliey of promoting eertain deities over others, but followed the usual pattern of aristoeratie patronage and display, as Kolb, JdI 92 (1977) 99-138, has demonstrated at length.